To get fed up of all the school apps/points of contact

[RedSkyatNight25]

Probably an issue as old as time (or rather technology) but we have an app for booking afterschool club, trips, dinners, looking at attendance. This replaced another app which functioned perfectly well, in fact was easier to navigate).

An app for communications, newsletters, that has no search function so I get both kid’s classes, notices, updates, request for a particular opening sort of box 15 minutes before the start of the school day, plus whole school updates on one long timeline so if you miss an update it’s really hard to search back to find out what size box you need.

Now for my youngest son we have been sent an email about another app which will update us on their topics for the week. I’ve used it before and it has similar functionality to the app mentioned above, which previously hosted such messages.

I presume the school pay a subscription for each and cannot believe there isn’t a singular platform that performs all of these functions.

AIBU? I try to keep up with it all but it’s a bit like playing Eeny, meeny, miny, moe and hoping for the best.

Is it an academy? Academy chains are notorious for introducing all this crap. Its "scaleable", so the argument is that implementing it across a whole group saves some sort of admin time somewhere. In reality its probably just automating a lot of school info in a way that passes the bulk of that administration effort to parents. There are businesses making a hell of a lot of money out of it one way or another, despite academy chains being "not profit".

Yes, particularly when they change things. We had Parentpay which I was used to but now they have changed that to something different and instead of direct top ups you have to out your card details in each time and it does not automatically top up the dinner money like parent pay used to. really irritating. and yes part of an Academy I think.

Oh and it happens because in the past you had a school secretary or maybe 2-3 of them in an office. And they did a mixed role.

Now, the academy chain has (for 15 schools or whatever)

• one communications manager who does stuff via one platform etc
• one finance manager who likes a different one
• one catering company who use something else

Etc etc

So yes the academy chain has probably replaced 20 school admin staff with 5-10, but all the work is spread among parents instead. In terms of overall man hours its probably the same.

I use five different apps across my children’s two schools. Absolute nightmare and waste of time. Some of them are more useable than others. One makes simple tasks take at least 3x longer than necessary, is worse than the app it replaced and you wonder who got it signed off and what they gained from doing so.

you wonder who got it signed off and what they gained from doing so.

Money. Anyone who thinks there isn't profit being siphoned out of academy chains is bonkers. The service fees, management costs, tech subscriptions. That whole industry are in cahoots to make it look above board and like profit isn't made but it is.

It is the same in the care & childcare sector. If you put a block tomorrow on payments from publicly funded bodies to third party suppliers, you'd see the private equity sector sink like a stone.

Yes it is an academy.

Yeah, it is very annoying. Then when your child changes schools and they both use the same system, it will forever be trying to log you in to the last school. Or when the meal payments company Squid went bust and it was a nightmare trying to get any money back. The best interface we had was for one of the kids nurseries, shame the schools don't use it.

When we changed from Parentpay this summer it was a right palaver because they told us to take all the money out, but when we did that automatic top-ups had not been turned off so it started automatically taking money again!

So that had to get sorted out before moving to the new system called Arbor which seems worse and. doesn't do the automatic topups. So now I need to keep checking the dinner money amounts in case they run out and they can't pay for their lunch! As well as having to add the card details each time.

This is exactly what we did - went from parent pay to arbor, arbor was supposed to also replace the communications app but it hasn’t.

I find Arbor a pain in the arse so far. It is saying DS has negative counts for uniform but DS says that is wrong so that is annoying me also. We spent ages getting the uniform as well (and spent a fortune on it)

What takes 3x longer? Am I missing something?

Our DS has just left secondary school, going to college. I had SO much joy in removing the app and unsubscribing to the emails! It worked brilliantly but it was continuous, several times a day hearing that 'ping'

Oh god! We have one of these! Well two to be exact.

One is parent pay and that looks archaic but atleast it functions and does make some sense.

The other one is for communications/ what they have been doing. Sooo shit! I don’t understand it. How can you make such a bad app in 2025.

I honestly believe I could get an AI to do better within one evening