Management Information System (MIS) for schools
Arbor Updates
Category : Blog
Click here to find out about ArborFest: The New Features Edition, taking place virtually on May 5th, 2022. Last week we welcomed over 1,500 members of staff from over 500 schools, trusts and partner organisations to ArborFest – our virtual customer conference dedicated to transformative ways of working. The benefits of being online were that
Click here to find out about ArborFest: The New Features Edition, taking place virtually on May 5th, 2022.
Last week we welcomed over 1,500 members of staff from over 500 schools, trusts and partner organisations to ArborFest – our virtual customer conference dedicated to transformative ways of working.
The benefits of being online were that we were able to gather together a huge and unique group of school staff from across the country – with some joining from the staffroom, and some from their sofa at home!
As the UK’s fastest-growing MIS community, with over 1,300 schools and MATs, we loved meeting lots of friendly faces from Arbor schools, including Leaders, Administrators, Teachers, Business Managers and every school role you could imagine – and some new faces too!
It was a fantastic opportunity to come together, share best practice and to learn from fellow colleagues. As every school has their own innovative ways of working, we certainly learned a lot ourselves too.
Kicking off the conference, Arbor’s Co-Founder and CEO, James, welcomed everyone by setting the scene (his dodgeball analogy for 2020 might resonate with some of you!) and sharing some of Arbor’s ambitions for the future.
“We should be thinking bigger than just the MIS, and bringing the whole school ecosystem into one holistic view.” – James Weatherill, Co-Founder and CEO, Arbor Education
You can catch a snippet from James’s Opening Talk here
The programme was jam-packed with practical workshops, feedback sessions and a brilliant keynote speech by tech expert, Rachel Coldicutt, who shared some really helpful advice on how we can reflect on our use of technology.
“We’ve all changed our behaviours overnight because of technology but we haven’t really had the time to consider its effect on us.” – Rachel Coldicutt, expert on the relationship between social impact and tech
You can catch a snippet of Rachel’s Keynote Speech here (look out for the full blog soon!)
Accompanied by staff from schools using Arbor, we held workshops across all areas of school operations – including assessment, reporting, exams and parental engagement. One of the stand-out sessions was “How Arbor can Support your School during Covid-19”, where we demonstrated the ease of Arbor’s Covid-19 dashboard – your daily reference point for Covid-19 information.
Arbor’s Head of Product, Hilary, demonstrated how our Product Vision shapes all the features we develop at Arbor. You can find out more about how we prioritise the features we work on here.
The Product Team also revealed a sneak peak of what’s coming up on our Product Roadmap, including the ability to roll out assessment policies centrally across your trust, and an exciting new toolkit – Arbor Enterprise – which gives you more control over your data and setup.
We also welcomed feedback from Arbor schools on how our features are helping them work more effectively in daily school life.
“Our vision is to give school Leaders, Teachers and Admin Staff the tools they need to work faster and smarter, together – with meaningful data and school-focused design and ways to collaborate with their school community.” – Hilary Aylesworth, Head of Product, Arbor Education
Arbor’s Chief of Customer Success, Sonia, talked through our tried-and-tested process for moving schools to Arbor, and how we work with schools to help you transform the way you work for the better.
We provide lots of ongoing support and consultancy services to help schools drive even more impact from Arbor. So if you’re an Arbor school, your Account Manager will be happy to arrange the best session for you. Just get in touch via accountmanagers@arbor-education.com
“When you move to Arbor, you begin a journey. We give you the support you need to empower all your staff to use Arbor to transform the way they work!” – Sonia Leighton, Chief of Customer Success, Arbor Education
A real highlight of ArborFest was the positive activity we saw on social media, with ArborFest attendees spreading the word to colleagues.
We asked attendees to share a photo of their ArborFest location and we were thrilled by all the entries. It was really difficult to choose a winner but in the end, it had to be Dave Leonard, Strategic IT Director at Watergrove Trust, whose beaming selfie really put a smile on our face. We’ll be sending Dave a £100 Amazon voucher as his prize.
Coming in second place, Sarah Sprack, Head of Isle Education Trust and Principal at South Axholme Academy, also impressed us with her lovely sunny view from her office. We’ll be sending Sarah some brownies in the post!
Here’s a small sample of the other runners up:
If you didn’t make it to ArborFest, but would still like to find out more about Arbor MIS, why not join one of our regular free demo webinars to see Arbor in action, or arrange a 1-on-1 demo with one of our team.
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