Dear Parents / Carers

We are very pleased to announce that we are ready to open the Parent Portal on Arbor. Arbor is our school’s management information system which holds information on:

Personal details
Contact details
Attendance
Payments
Document archive
Parents’ afternoon bookings
Trips and clubs bookings
Consents
Messaging service

We have been using this cloud based system in school for a year and we have found it extremely useful in allowing staff to securely retrieve the information they need about the children quickly and wherever they are. It is a very secure system and has been cleared by our Data Protection Officer at Global Policing.

It has always been our intention to use the system with parents, but during this period of remote working and reducing the numbers of people coming into school, we have decided to accelerate our plans. We realise that this may mean that it is harder to support you all if there are any problems, but on balance we believe it will help us in school as well as giving you the information we hold on your child at your fingertips. There are a number of benefits for families:

Update the personal and contact details of children, parents and emergency contacts (all changes will need to be verified in school to protect privacy and security)
Keep track on your child’s attendance (handy for knowing if a prize may be coming)
Keep track on meal payments and top up the balance without needing to come into school with cash (coming soon)
See school reports on your child (no need to print and send the reports out physically)
Book parents’ afternoon slots with the teachers (no need to gather around the sign up sheets)
Sign up for and pay for trips and clubs (difficult normally if you are busy around the end of the day etc and we know that those forms can go missing in bags)
Provide consents
Send and retrieve in-app messages (quicker and easier way to get in touch)

We will send you a text message with the URL link for our specific Arbor site (please use the link rather than finding Arbor through a search engine) where you will be able to complete the sign up process.

For the first login you ideally need to do so on a desktop computer through a web browser, but it can be done on a smartphone or tablet (but it needs to be done in Chrome web browser). It cannot be done in the app for the first log in. (If you intend to use the app, log in through the web browser, and after completing the process, log out and then sign in to the app.)
Click on the link in the text message and select ‘logging on for the first time’.
You will need to enter the email address we have on our Arbor system.
Follow the link provided if you receive an email
Enter the date of birth for your child (or a selected child if more than one).
Accept all terms and conditions.

A full guide on logging in and a video are at the end of this post.

I know we have asked a lot of parents in terms of using technology and we have tried to restrict changes to things that we believe are absolutely essential such as Google Classroom and now Arbor Parent Portal. Please only sign up to Parent Portal when you feel ready and comfortable and keep in touch if you need help. Thank you again for you ongoing patience and support, it is very much appreciated by all of us. If there are any questions about this new system then please email us. We believe this will make everyone’s lives easier in the long term but recognise that there might be a few teething problems initially.

There are links to the App Store, help videos, parent guide and email link to school below. We would like to know what your experiences are with the Parent Portal, so please email us to let us about the successes and difficulties.

Stay safe and many thanks