Going cashless at Nightingale Primary School

Two major tech issues needed addressing:

1. To replace the Management Information System (MIS), previously supplied via the Local Authority.
2. Deploy parent-facing communication and payment systems that worked with the new MIS.

The school opted for Arbor Education as their new MIS.

“Our legacy MIS system was outdated and neither user-friendly nor cost effective,” explained Richard Stafford-Hill, school business manager. “We had prior knowledge of Arbor’s attainment and progress analysis reporting, so we were aware of their strengths in this field. We now had the opportunity to combine curriculum tracking, summative assessment, attendance management, and behaviour and intervention management into one, more cost-effective MIS system.”

When considering communication and payment systems, the school saw an opportunity to go one step further and get a system that could also help organise their extended day activities, including the breakfast club and nursery provision, as well as their pupil meal administration.

As part of the discussions with Arbor, eeZeeTrip was recommended as a possible solution for parent communication and payments. This platform had the added bonus of providing an app to parents where they could sign up and pay for other activities.

The timescales were tight: just a half-term break to switch to the new systems. The big challenge on day one was to maintain continuity in dinner money payments. These were ‘rolled over’ from the previous system, with credits / debits collated into eeZeeTrip’s new school meals module.

Each day, staff take the dinner register in eeZeeTrip, with the app instantly updating parents on their children’s meal balance. Parents can now pay directly from eeZeeTrip for their school meals as well as signing up for extended day and enrichment activities.

Richard added: “The cost efficiencies to be gained as a school by going cashless added to the benefits to parental engagement, make online payment and communication systems a must for the forward-looking school. What makes EeZeeTrip and Arbor stand out from the crowd is not only their innovative thinking, but also their willingness to engage with schools to enhance and adapt their products to schools’ requirements.”