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The Arbor Blog

Expert ideas for a better working life at your school or trust

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Anna Christie - 4 September, 2023

Category : Blog

Arbor MIS and MAT MIS in review – 2022/2023

As the new school year kicks off let’s take a look back at some of the amazing features we released to Arbor MIS and MAT MIS in the past year! – Rotating meal menus and Parent Portal meal choices. Create menus that rotate on a periodic basis, and allow parents to make meal choices for

As the new school year kicks off let’s take a look back at some of the amazing features we released to Arbor MIS and MAT MIS in the past year!

– Rotating meal menus and Parent Portal meal choices. Create menus that rotate on a periodic basis, and allow parents to make meal choices for their children via the Parent Portal. Learn more here

– Emergency Alert. Get help with the click of a button by sending an instant notification or email to staff who are on call. Plus, report on past alerts and view them on the student profile. Learn more here

– Cohort and Mark Level Analysis. Collate information on every summative assessment mark all from within MAT MIS! Learn more here

– Post-16 Census report. Generate a quick summary report of your Post-16 data to ensure you receive all your funding from the School Census, either for yourself or to send to a third party. Learn more here

– CRB Cunninghams Cashless Catering integration. Integrate with your cashless catering system. Arbor now integrates with CRB Cunninghams, this integration lets you manage cashless catering payments directly from your MIS. Arbor integrates with three cashless catering systems; Civica Cashless Catering, Live Register and CRB Cunninghams. Learn more here

– PowerBI Datasets. Connect more data to your BI tool. New datasets added to our PowerBI connector, including Student Academic Year Enrolments, User Defined Fields (created at both MAT and school level), and User Defined Records. Learn more here

– Live National Benchmarks. See live national data from other Arbor schools in your MIS. See real-time National Average and National Percentile data for attendance data, letting you compare yourself to similar schools and see where you sit. Learn more here

– Calendar update on the Arbor App. Parents and guardians can see exactly where their child is at any point in the current day by viewing their child’s calendar for the whole day on the Arbor App. Learn more here

– Import Assessment Marks in MAT MIS. Roll out assessments to the schools in your trust. Instead of logging into individual school sites or sending assessment data to your school data managers, you can use an import spreadsheet in MAT MIS to input the school data yourself. Learn more here

– Random Student Picker. Engage your students and choose them fairly using the Random Student Picker. The student picker spins to select a random student from your class – perfect for projecting on your board. Learn more here

– School Staff Absence Reporting in MAT MIS. Report on school staff absences from in your MAT MIS, eliminating the need to make a custom report. You can also use bonus fields like Bradford Factor reporting and the option to include only workforce census-eligible staff. Learn more here

– Apple Pay and Google Pay. Give parents the flexibility to pay the way that suits them, with pay by Apple Pay and Google Pay! No more re-entering card details every time on the Arbor App. Learn more here

– School Shop Orders dashboard. See an overview of all your orders, payments and refunds without needing to go into each item individually with our School Shop Dashboard. Learn more here

– Behaviour comms templates. Create SMS and email templates to notify guardians about behaviour incidents or detentions. Add detail with our built-in merge fields, or set different messages for different severity levels. Learn more here

– Bulk Add Assessment Columns. Add columns for Summative or Ad Hoc assessments to a Student Custom Report Writer in one go. Plus, add different components for Summative assessments, such as Baseline, Predicted Mark, and Year Target. Learn more here

– New layout and tools for tables. Introducing our new tabling tool which lets you; rearrange and hide columns, search for data quickly, navigate and enter data using only the keyboard, and much more. Learn more here

– Single Central Record in MAT MIS. Quickly and easily keep staff details up to date across your trust with our updated Single Central Record (SCR) in MAT MIS. Choose which columns you want to see in your SCR, and email staff members directly. Learn more here

– Scheduling  Comms. Choose when to send out your emails, SMS and in-app messages with our scheduling comms feature. No more logging in out of hours – you can draft as usual, then just click send later to pick the date and time. Learn more here

– Automated Capita One exports. Automate your Capita One Export. We worked with Capita One to automate the Capita One Export, reducing school workload and improving data quality for your LA. You’ll need to ask your LA to get in touch with us to get this set up. Learn more here

– SMS Subscription. Send SMS with our new annual SMS tariff, that makes it simpler to keep parents in the loop. Pay yearly and get the benefits of an ongoing subscription. Learn more here

– Updates to the sex and gender fields. To align with the DfE, we’ve made some changes to the gender field in Arbor. We’ve relabelled the Gender field in Arbor to Sex to reflect its existing use in the census, and we’ve added a new field on student, guardian and staff profiles for Gender Identity. Learn more here

– KS4 Assessment Analysis. Use the KS4 Assessment Analysis page to track student progress in more detail, plus get a Progress 8 estimate based on last year’s Attainment Band data. Learn more here

– Communications Designer. Format your emails and text exactly the way you want to. Our communications designer tool gives you the flexibility to set your own fonts and colours, undo and redo, and add in tables and merge fields. Plus, it’s all controllable from your keyboard. Learn more here

– DfE Assessments in report cards. Share DfE Assessment results easily with your parents and students. You can add DfE Assessments from any academic year to both long and short report cards. Learn more here

– EYFS Analysis in MAT MIS. See your EYFS DfE Assessments in MAT MIS. Just like on the School MIS, you can now analyse your EYFS DfE Assessments, as well as KS1 and KS2 results all from MAT MIS. Learn more here

– Custom Report Cards. Build report cards tailored to your school’s needs. You can now build a completely customised report card that looks and feels like your school, and pull in the exact data you want, directly from Arbor MIS. Learn more here

– DfE Primary Assessment Benchmarks. See where you sit nationally, where you’re excelling, identify areas for improvement and look back at previous academic years. Arbor shows you the national average and the percentile your school is in for: 

  • EYFS Level of development
  • KS1 Year 1 Phonics Screening Check
  • KS1 Reading, Writing, Maths
  • KS2 Reading, Writing, Maths
  • KS2 Multiplication

Learn more here

– New School Year Setup Audit. Track your school’s new school year setup from your MAT MIS with New School Year Setup Audit. Easily see how all of your schools are progressing with their preparation for the new year, and find out which steps schools have completed and which are outstanding, directly from your MAT MIS. Learn more here

– Custom Behaviour Workflows. Create and assign custom workflows to behaviour types, in addition to the existing automatic workflows based on severity levels. Giving you that extra flexibility to create behaviour workflows bespoke to your needs. Learn more here

– Biometric Login for the Arbor App. Parents can use face, fingerprint recognition, or their device’s pin code to log in without needing to enter their password every time. Learn more here

Report on Club Attendance. Get better visibility of your attendance data for the clubs that you’re running with our two new ways to report on clubs in the Custom Report Writer. Learn more here

– Ask Arbor. Powered by Microsoft Azure OpenAI, Ask Arbor is your new collaborator and assistant. It’s built seamlessly into Arbor MIS and is designed to turn your words into actions. The first two features, free to all schools that we have released in this suite include:

  • Draft an email, letter, in-app message or SMS (located in Communications)
  • Create a report for a student (located on Student Profiles)

Learn more here

To keep up-to-date with all our latest releases visit our Change Log or to see what we are working on next and to give feedback visit our Product Roadmap.

Anna Christie - 3 July, 2023

Category : Blog

What’s new in June?

How is it the end of June already?! With summer break fast approaching, we’ve been working hard to deliver a host of updates and improvements to get ready for the new school year. What’s new in Arbor MIS At Arbor, we’re on a mission to transform the way schools work for the better. Here are

How is it the end of June already?! With summer break fast approaching, we’ve been working hard to deliver a host of updates and improvements to get ready for the new school year.

What’s new in Arbor MIS

At Arbor, we’re on a mission to transform the way schools work for the better. Here are just some of our recent launches and updates: 

Custom Report Cards 

Build report cards tailored to your school’s needs. You can now build a completely customised report card that looks and feels like your school, and pull in the exact data you want, directly from Arbor MIS.

Learn more here

DfE Primary Assessment Benchmarks

See where you sit nationally, where you’re excelling, identify areas for improvement and look back at previous academic years. Arbor shows you the national average and the percentile your school is in for: 

  • EYFS Level of development
  • KS1 Year 1 Phonics Screening Check
  • KS1 Reading, Writing, Maths
  • KS2 Reading, Writing, Maths
  • KS2 Multiplication

Learn more here

Statutory Attendance for Schools and MATs

New Statutory Attendance KPI added to your MIS homepage KPIs. You can now see Statutory Attendance for students aged 5-15 who are not enrolled as Guest pupils. 

Learn more here

New fields available in Custom Report Writer

We’ve added some great new fields to the Custom Report Writer in the past month, making it easier for you to see and analyse the data you need.

  • You can now report on your Formative Curriculum assessments using the new Curriculum Mark fields
  • We’ve added a new SEN Notes field to the Student report. You can pull in all notes for a student in one cell, or add a filter just for specific date ranges or summary content.
  • You can now see and filter behavioural incidents based on specific actions taken, such as detentions or other disciplinary measures, using the Actions Taken field in your Behavioural Incidents report. Letting you easily track and analyse the outcomes of behavioural incidents.

Learn more here

What’s new in MAT MIS

MAT MIS is custom-built for better collaboration across your trust, with tools that make it easy to work together as one organisation.

New School Year Setup Audit

Keep track of your school’s new school year setup from your MAT MIS with New School Year Setup Audit. You can easily see how all of your schools are progressing with their preparation for the new year, and find out which steps schools have completed and which are outstanding, directly from your MAT MIS.

Learn more here

DfE Primary Assessment Benchmarks in MAT MIS

See where your schools sit nationally, where they’re excelling, identify areas for improvement and look back at previous academic years. Arbor shows you the national average for your schools  for: 

  • EYFS Level of development
  • KS1 Year 1 Phonics Screening Check
  • KS1 Reading, Writing, Maths
  • KS2 Reading, Writing, Maths
  • KS2 Multiplication

Learn more here

Staff List

Do you need to look up a specific staff member but can’t remember exactly what school they work in? You can now see a list of all your staff from across your trust, their school and their job role. Click directly through to their staff record from MAT MIS, saving you time and effort. 

Learn more here

User List

Across your trust, you want to make sure all your staff are getting the most out of your MIS. In MAT MIS you can now get insight into key user information. Identify staff who are regularly engaging in Arbor MIS, those who may need a gentle reminder to login and any staff who no longer work at your trust and need removing. 

Learn more here

To keep up-to-date with all our latest releases visit our Change Log or to see what we are working on next and to give feedback visit our Product Roadmap.

Anna Christie - 2 June, 2023

Category : Blog

What’s new in May?

With summer fast approaching, we’ve been working hard to deliver a host of updates and improvements before the holidays begin.   What’s new in Arbor MIS At Arbor, we’re on a mission to transform the way schools work for the better. Here are just some of our recent launches and updates:    Communications Designer Format

With summer fast approaching, we’ve been working hard to deliver a host of updates and improvements before the holidays begin.

 

What’s new in Arbor MIS

At Arbor, we’re on a mission to transform the way schools work for the better. Here are just some of our recent launches and updates: 

 

Communications Designer
Format your emails and text exactly the way you want to. Our new designer tool gives you the flexibility to set your own fonts and colours, undo and redo, and add in tables and merge fields. Plus, it’s all controllable from your keyboard. 

Learn more here

 

DfE Assessments in report cards

We’ve made it much easier to share DfE Assessment results with parents and students! No more manual sends, you can now add DfE Assessments from any academic year to both long and short report cards. 

Learn more here


Invoice status for parents 

Our update to the invoice status on Parent Portal and the Arbor App gives your parents more visibility on the exact status of their invoices, either ‘Paid’, ‘Issued’ or ‘Cancelled’. 

Learn more here

 

Check staff member user access
Want to check which areas of Arbor your staff can access? Now you can easily see whether staff can access a page and the required permissions using the page URL.

Learn more here


Updates to our Exam module

With exam season in full swing, we’ve made some improvements to our Exam module we hope you’ll love from being able to download exam seating plans in all available formats to updates to access arrangements. Visit our Exams section of the Help Centre for more information.


What’s new in MAT MIS

MAT MIS is custom-built for better collaboration across your trust, with tools that make it easy to work together as one organisation.

 

EYFS Analysis in MAT MIS

EYFS DfE Assessments is now in MAT MIS. Just like on the School MIS, you can now analyse your EYFS DfE Assessments, as well as KS1 and KS2 results all from MAT MIS. 

Learn more here

 

Shared Teaching 

Need to bulk copy your setup from the previous year? You can now do this in MAT MIS! We’ve made setting up and copying your Shared Teaching courses and timetable slots much easier, with bulk copy setup.

Learn more here

 

New BI Connector Datasets

As part of our plan to continue to evolve our BI Connector, we’ve added Ad Hoc Assessments dataset. 

Learn more here

 

To keep up-to-date with all our latest releases visit our Change Log or to see what we are working on next and to give feedback visit our Product Roadmap.

Anna Christie - 3 May, 2023

Category : Blog

What’s new in April?

Summer Term is in full swing and the sunshine has started to make an appearance. April saw us make some exciting releases into Arbor MIS and MAT MIS that will help support you, your school and your students.   What’s new in Arbor MIS At Arbor, we’re on a mission to transform the way schools work

Summer Term is in full swing and the sunshine has started to make an appearance. April saw us make some exciting releases into Arbor MIS and MAT MIS that will help support you, your school and your students.  

What’s new in Arbor MIS

At Arbor, we’re on a mission to transform the way schools work for the better. Here are just some of our recent launches and updates: 

Updates to the sex and gender fields
To align with the DfE, we’ve made some changes to the gender field in Arbor. We’ve relabelled the Gender field in Arbor to Sex to reflect its existing use in the census, and we’ve added a new field on student, guardian and staff profiles for Gender Identity.

Learn more here

KS4 Assessment Analysis

Use our new KS4 Assessment Analysis page to track student progress in more detail, plus get a Progress 8 estimate based on last year’s Attainment Band data. 

Learn more here

The latest features added to tables 

We’ve made some exciting updates in the past month and will continue to make improvements throughout Summer Term. 

What’s new in April for tables:

  • Icons and formatting now display in column filters
  • A handy Reset button to quickly clear the filters applied to a column
  • You’ll get a pop-up warning if you’ve got unsaved changes or data that needs to be submitted
  • A new ‘Bulk Fill Blank Values’ button on all editable tables

Learn more here

What’s new in MAT MIS

MAT MIS is custom-built for better collaboration across your trust, with tools that make it easy to work together as one organisation.

School Staff Absence Reporting improvements

We made some great updates to School Staff Absence Reporting in April following your feedback. 

  • You asked we added it! You can now search by Absence Created Date which will support you in linking your absence reporting to payroll
  • Now when you run a report all active absences show for your selected dates. Previously it would return those that started on or after the filtered dates

Learn more here

To keep up-to-date with all our latest releases visit our Change Log or to see what we are working on next and to give feedback visit our Product Roadmap.

Anna Christie - 31 March, 2023

Category : Blog

Spring Term in review – what’s new?

And that’s a wrap for Spring Term! As you start to relax and enjoy your Easter break, we take a look back on some of the exciting releases to Arbor MIS and Arbor MAT MIS over the past term that will help support you, your school and your students. – What’s new for schools At

And that’s a wrap for Spring Term! As you start to relax and enjoy your Easter break, we take a look back on some of the exciting releases to Arbor MIS and Arbor MAT MIS over the past term that will help support you, your school and your students.

What’s new for schools

At Arbor, we’re on a mission to transform the way schools work for the better. Here are just some of our recent launches and updates: 

Scheduling  Comms

No more logging in out of hours – you can now choose when to send out your emails, SMS and in-app messages! Draft as usual, then just click Send later to pick the date and time. Learn more here.

Automated Capita One exports
We’ve worked with Capita One to automate the Capita One Export, reducing school workload and improving data quality for your LA. You’ll need to ask your LA to get in touch with us to get this set up. Learn more here.

SMS Subscription is here

Our new annual SMS tariff makes it simpler to keep parents in the loop. SMS Subscription is perfect for schools who regularly send SMS messages. Pay yearly and get the benefits of an ongoing subscription. Learn more here.

Apple Pay and Google Pay are here

If your school has our Payments Plus module, you can now give parents the flexibility to pay the way that suits them! No more re-entering card details every time on the Arbor App. Learn more here.

School Shop Orders dashboard 

Our new School Shop dashboard gives you an overview of orders, payments and refunds without needing to go into each item individually. Plus we’ve added a new School Shop: Administer permission. Learn more here.

Behaviour comms templates 

Create SMS and email templates to notify guardians about behaviour incidents or detentions. Add detail with our built-in merge fields, or set different messages for different severity levels. Learn more here.

Random Student Picker 

There is always that activity in the classroom where you need to choose a student at random. You now can with the new Student Picker. Engage your students and choose them fairly, the student picker spins to select a random student from your class – perfect for projecting on the board. Learn more here.

Bulk Add Assessment Columns in the Custom Report Writer

Want to add columns for Summative or Ad Hoc assessments to a Student Custom Report Writer in one go? You now can! Plus, add different components for Summative assessments, such as Baseline, Predicted Mark, and Year Target. Learn more here.

New layout and tools for tables

We’re very excited about the new tables in Arbor! The new tables are much more than just a visual change, they’re a whole new tabling tool. We’ve made some exciting updates in the past term and will continue to make improvements throughout Summer Term. 

What’s new in Spring Term for tables:

  • Rearrange and hide columns, search for data quickly, and filter tables in places like the Custom Report Writer, Behaviour and Attendance
  • Navigate and enter data using only the keyboard, copy and paste and drag to fill, plus whole screen tables
  • Analyse all of your data in Arbor, reducing the need for external spreadsheets
  • Customise your view of the tables and sort data how you want to. When you select ‘Autosize all columns’, the width of the columns are saved so you can see them the next time you return to the table
  • For better visibility, you can turn on the column borders in tables, under the settings button, and it will save on a per-table basis
  • We’ve added a ‘Disable Cell Colours’ setting to increase visibility for colour blind users

Learn more here.

What’s new for MAT Central Teams

MAT MIS is custom-built for better collaboration across your trust, with tools that make it easy to work together as one organisation.

School Staff Absence Reporting

School staff are now included in Staff Absence reporting in MAT MIS, eliminating the need to make a custom report. We’ve also added some extra bonus fields like Bradford Factor reporting and the option to include only workforce census-eligible staff. Learn more here.

New and improved Single Central Record

We’ve made some updates to Single Central Record (SCR) so you can easily and quickly keep staff details up to date across your trust. Choose which columns you want to see in your SCR, and email staff members directly. Plus a small change we know will have a big impact, we’ve added the category of Business Role to the filter options! Learn more here.

New Microsoft Power BI Datasets

As part of our commitment to make sure we’re providing you with the best data possible, we’ve added a number of datasets to our Microsoft Power BI connector this year, including:

  • Student Academic Year Enrolments
  • User Defined Fields
  • User Defined Records
  • Improvements to existing Staff, Student, Enrolments and Year Groups views
  • User Logins
  • Password Rules
  • Academic Units & Enrolments
  • Timetable Slots

Learn more here.

To keep up-to-date with all our latest releases visit our Change Log or to see what we are working on next and to give feedback visit our Product Roadmap.

Anna Christie - 31 January, 2023

Category : Blog

What’s new in January?

And just like that, it’s the end of January and 2023 has officially started. No time for any January blues here, we’ve released some very exciting features that we can’t wait to share with you!     What’s new for schools At Arbor, we’re on a mission to transform the way schools work for the better.

And just like that, it’s the end of January and 2023 has officially started. No time for any January blues here, we’ve released some very exciting features that we can’t wait to share with you!  

 

What’s new for schools

At Arbor, we’re on a mission to transform the way schools work for the better. Here are just some of our recent launches and updates: 

Apple Pay and Google Pay are here

If your school has our Payments Plus module, you can now give parents the flexibility to pay the way that suits them! No more re-entering card details every time on the Arbor App. Learn more here

School Shop Orders dashboard 

Our new School Shop dashboard gives you an overview of orders, payments and refunds without needing to go into each item individually. Plus we’ve added a new School Shop: Administer permission. Learn more here

Behaviour comms templates 

Create SMS and email templates to notify guardians about behaviour incidents or detentions. Add detail with our built-in merge fields, or set different messages for different severity levels. Learn more here

Random Student Picker 

There is always that activity in the classroom where you need to choose a student at random. You now can with the new Student Picker. Engage your students and choose them fairly, the student picker spins to select a random student from your class – perfect for projecting on the board. Learn more here

What’s new for MATs

MAT MIS is custom-built for better collaboration across your trust, with tools that make it easy to work together as one organisation.

School Staff Absence Reporting

School staff are now included in Staff Absence reporting in MAT MIS, eliminating the need to make a custom report. We’ve also added some extra bonus fields like Bradford Factor reporting and the option to include only workforce census-eligible staff. Learn more here

Also this January, we welcomed hundreds of schools to #ArborFest, where our Head of Product, Hilary Aylesworth, took us through what was coming up next in the Arbor roadmap.

Keep an eye on our Twitter and LinkedIn for insights from the day!

Natasha Cobby - 16 December, 2022

Category : Blog

Autumn Term in review

To round off autumn, we’re highlighting some of the most exciting updates we’ve released this past term. We update Arbor fortnightly, listening closely and responding to what you tell us.    What we released for schools Rotating meal menus and Parent Portal meal choices Payments Plus got even better this term with the ability to

To round off autumn, we’re highlighting some of the most exciting updates we’ve released this past term. We update Arbor fortnightly, listening closely and responding to what you tell us. 

 

What we released for schools

Rotating meal menus and Parent Portal meal choices

Payments Plus got even better this term with the ability to create menus that rotate on a periodic basis, and allow parents to make meal choices for their children via the Parent Portal. Learn more

Emergency Alert

Get help with the click of a button by sending an instant notification or email to staff who are on call. Plus, report on past alerts and view them on the student profile. Learn more

Calendar update on the Arbor App

Parents can now see their child’s calendar for the whole day on the Arbor App! Parents and guardians can see exactly where their child is at any point in the current day, rather than just the lesson before and after. Learn more.

CRB Cunninghams Cashless Catering integration

Arbor integrates with CRB Cunninghams! Our cashless catering integrations let you manage cashless catering payments directly from your MIS – without needing a separate payments system as well. The integration is included in our MIS Payments module, and is also part of our Arbor Perform package. Learn more.

Live National Benchmarks

See live national data from other Arbor schools in your MIS. Starting with attendance data, you can see real-time National Average and National Percentile data so you can compare yourself to similar schools and see where you sit. Learn more.

 

What we released for MATs

School Staff Absence Reporting

School staff are now included in Staff Absence reporting, eliminating the need to make a custom report. We’ve also added some extra bonus fields like Bradford Factor reporting and the option to include only workforce census eligible staff. Learn more.

National Arbor Average benchmark

We’ve added a new benchmark in MAT MIS to Whole School Attendance, Authorised Absence and Unauthorised Absence KPIs. It’ll show you how your schools compare with other schools using Arbor. Learn more.

New PowerBI Datasets

This term we’ve added lots of new datasets to our PowerBI connector to give you more bespoke reporting options. You can now analyse Academic Units, Timetable Slots, Student Academic Year Enrolments, User Defined Fields and more! Learn more.

Import Assessment Marks

Have you rolled out assessments to the schools in your trust? Instead of logging into individual school sites or sending assessment data to your school data managers, you can now use an import spreadsheet in MAT MIS to input the school data yourself. Learn more

Emergency Alert

Get help with the click of a button by sending an instant notification or email to staff who are on call. Plus, report on past alerts and view them on the student profile. Learn more.

Live National Benchmarks

Your schools can now see live national data from other Arbor schools in their MIS. Starting with attendance data, you can see real-time National Average and National Percentile data so you can compare yourself to similar schools and see where you sit. Learn more.

 

Don’t forget to visit the Arbor Change Log for all things new in the MIS. Make sure to bookmark the page for easy access!

If you haven’t already, book your free ticket to join us at ArborFest 2023 our biggest in-person customer conference to date! Meet school and trust leaders from across the Arbor Community for a day packed with inspiring talks and workshops – all exploring the theme “Transforming the way schools work.”

If you don’t yet use Arbor, we’d love to speak to you: email hello@arbor-education.com and one of our team will be in contact.

Anna Christie - 1 December, 2022

Category : Blog

What’s new in November?

And just like that, it’s the end of November and the holiday season is approaching. We released some very exciting features in November that we can’t wait to share with you!   What’s new for schools At Arbor, we’re on a mission to transform the way schools work for the better. Here are just some of

And just like that, it’s the end of November and the holiday season is approaching. We released some very exciting features in November that we can’t wait to share with you!  

What’s new for schools

At Arbor, we’re on a mission to transform the way schools work for the better. Here are just some of our recent launches and updates: 

Live National Benchmarks are here 

You can now see live national data from other Arbor schools in your MIS. Starting with attendance data, you’ll be able to see real-time National Average and National Percentile data so you can compare yourself to similar schools and see where you sit. Learn more here

Calendar update on the Arbor App

Parents can now see their child’s calendar for the whole day on the Arbor App! Parents and guardians can see exactly where their child is at any point in the current day, rather than just the lesson before and after. Learn more here

New Marksheet Analysis Fields 

We’ve added new marksheet fields so you can see student progress at a glance, including:

  • Current vs Baseline
  • Current vs Year Target
  • Current vs Predicted Mark

Learn more here

What’s new for MATs

MAT MIS is custom-built for better collaboration across your trust, with tools that make it easy to work together as one organisation.

Import Assessment Marks in MAT MIS 

Roll out assessments to the schools in your trust. Instead of logging into individual school sites or sending assessment data to your school data managers, you can now use an import spreadsheet in MAT MIS to input the school data yourself. Learn more here

New Power BI Datasets

In November we added even more datasets to our Power BI connector to give you more bespoke reporting options. You can now analyse Academic Units, Academic Unit Enrolments, Timetable Slots and Timetable Slot Staff. Learn more here

Don’t forget to visit the Arbor Change Log for all things new in the MIS. Make sure to bookmark the page for easy access!

If you haven’t already, book your free ticket to join us at ArborFest 2023 our biggest in-person customer conference to date! Meet school and trust leaders from across the Arbor Community for a day packed with inspiring talks and workshops – all exploring the theme “Transforming the way schools work.”

If you don’t yet use Arbor, we’d love to speak to you: email hello@arbor-education.com and one of our team will be in contact.

Hilary Aylesworth - 11 November, 2022

Category : Blog

The three themes shaping our Autumn Term Roadmap

– At Arbor, we’re on a mission to transform the way schools work for the better. And it starts by giving everyone the right tools and technology for the job. We’re constantly evolving and looking at the different ways we can help support schools and MATs to thrive. In the Summer Term, we released: 42

At Arbor, we’re on a mission to transform the way schools work for the better. And it starts by giving everyone the right tools and technology for the job.

We’re constantly evolving and looking at the different ways we can help support schools and MATs to thrive. In the Summer Term, we released:

  • 42 new features
  • 60 improvements to current features!

Click here to find out exactly what these features included.

In a recent survey carried out by The Key, Arbor has the highest percentage of customers saying they are “extremely satisfied” with their MIS functionality. View full report here.

Our product vision at Arbor is to ‘Give school leaders, teachers, admin staff and parents the tools they need to work faster and smarter – together’. This vision sits across our three development themes for Autumn Term: 

  • Visible, clear, actionable data
  • Easy to find, easy to use
  • Work together, effortlessly

The data that sits in your MIS is a powerful resource. We want schools and MATs to have this data at their fingertips, so that they can make data-driven decisions quickly and easily. To do this, data needs to be consistent, efficient and actionable

Here’s three key releases due in the coming months, which will help you make actionable decisions from your data:

  • Refreshed predicted Progress 8 scores based on DfE updates
  • View data on parental engagement in MAT MIS
  • School staff absence reports in MAT MIS

It’s not worth having an MIS packed with brilliant features if they are difficult to find or use. Our second theme is all about making sure Arbor continues to be the UK’s most intuitive MIS, for both staff and parents. 

Here’s my top three features to look out for which will make our MIS even easier to use:

  • Biometric login to the Arbor App – I’m so excited about this one!
  • View all your School Shop orders on one overview page, letting you easily see all outstanding orders in one place
  • Greater visibility for parents, on the App and Parent Portal, to see what money they owe to the school 

Collaboration is key to any school or trust, whether you’re joining up processes across your team or streamlining communication with parents. 

With so many exciting new features to come under this theme, I’ve given you my top five to keep an eye out for:

  • Create and update bulk pay scales in MAT MIS, and pushdown to your schools
  • New workflows for Behaviour Types and improvements to our behaviour comms templates
  • Create custom report cards within Arbor
  • Apple Pay and Google Pay on the Arbor App
  • Integration with Pebble Cashless Catering

 

If you have an improvement or an idea for a new feature we should develop, we’d love to hear it. There are four ways you can share it with us:

  • Comment on our Product Roadmap: Upvote your favourite feature and leave a comment describing how we can support you most. Upvotes and comments feed directly into how we prioritise and build what we’re developing each term. View our Product Roadmap.
  • Come along to an ArborFest Feedback Forum: Every ArborFest, our Product Team runs workshops tailored to different roles and remits. We’ll work together to identify and prioritise the most impactful improvements and new features to build. We’ll be announcing how to register for our 26th January forum in the coming weeks.
  • Complete the Customer Satisfaction Survey (NPS): Towards the end of each term, we send out a quick survey where you can have your say in how Arbor impacts your school day-to-day. We review all the data in order to understand what’s working well and where we can improve.
  • Join an Arbor User Group: Our user groups require regular participation in meetings, testing features, giving feedback and sharing best practice. You can register interest in an Arbor user group via your Account Manager.

I’m looking forward to hearing all your thoughts and suggestions so we can continue to make Arbor the best it can be for our schools! And I hope you are as excited about our Autumn Roadmap as I am.

View the recording of our Autumn Product Roadmap Reveal webinar here.

Anna Christie - 31 October, 2022

Category : Blog

What’s new in October?

Welcome back from Half Term! We hope you had a restful break – we’ve got lots of treats for you in this month’s blog. – What’s new for schools At Arbor, we’re on a mission to transform the way schools work for the better. Here are just some of our recent launches and updates:  Product

Welcome back from Half Term! We hope you had a restful break – we’ve got lots of treats for you in this month’s blog.

What’s new for schools

At Arbor, we’re on a mission to transform the way schools work for the better. Here are just some of our recent launches and updates: 

Product Roadmap Reveal webinar 

We’re excited to share Arbor’s product roadmap for Autumn Term! On Wednesday 9th November, Hilary (Head of Product at Arbor) will take you through our vision for Arbor and the themes we’re focusing on this term for product improvements and new features. Book your free spot here

Post-16 Census report 

You can now generate a quick summary report of your Post-16 data to ensure you receive all your funding from the School Census, either for yourself or to send to a third party. Learn more here

CRB Cunninghams Cashless Catering integration 

Arbor now integrates with CRB Cunninghams! Our cashless catering integrations let you manage cashless catering payments directly from your MIS – without needing a separate payments system as well. The integration is included in our MIS Payments module, and is also part of our Arbor Perform package. Learn more here

Manage school events in bulk 

We’ve added two new pages to manage events more easily. Go to School > Timetable > School Events to update staff, location, and cover requirements in bulk. Learn more here

What’s new for MATs

MAT MIS is custom-built for better collaboration across your trust, with tools that make it easy to work together as one organisation.

New PowerBI Datasets
Another month and another group of datasets have been added to our PowerBI connector. You can now analyse Student Academic Year Enrolments, User Defined Fields (created at both MAT and school level), and User Defined Records. Learn more here

Don’t forget to visit the Arbor Change Log for all things new in the MIS. Make sure to bookmark the page for easy access!

If you haven’t already, we’d love for you to join in the #WhyMySchoolSwitched campaign and share your “switch stories” with us on social media!

If you don’t yet use Arbor, we’d love to speak to you: email hello@arbor-education.com and one of our team will be in contact.

Amy Underdown - 20 July, 2022

Category : Blog

Arbor’s year in review

Over the past year, we’ve added lots of exciting new features and integrations into our cloud MIS! We update Arbor fortnightly, listening closely and responding to what you tell us. Below are just some of our top picks of everything our team have been working hard on for the past year. Advanced Report Calculations Approve

Over the past year, we’ve added lots of exciting new features and integrations into our cloud MIS!

We update Arbor fortnightly, listening closely and responding to what you tell us. Below are just some of our top picks of everything our team have been working hard on for the past year.

Advanced Report Calculations

Approve and lock assessment marks in bulk

Improved keyboard accessibility

Wraparound Care Clubs

Bulk copy Assessment marks 

New MAT MIS homepage

Improvements to Contributing EEP Hours

Attainment Over Time in MAT MIS

Prevent Attendance from being overwritten

Bulk update Core Learning Aims

Share report cards with students

User Defined Fields (UDFs)

School-led tutoring hours

External report cards

Guardians of applicants can access Parent Portal

Clickable hyperlinks in In-App Messages

Custom Group Alerts

Attendance KPIs in MAT MIS

Pay by childcare voucher

Show RANK order on Marksheets

Track Learner Engagement 

Suspend lessons

Send emails via bulk action in MAT MIS

Civica cashless catering integration

School Shop

Census Audit in MAT MIS

Shared Teaching

New Marksheets

Creating templates for In-App Messages

Live Register cashless catering integration

Automatic Assessment target-setting

Ad Hoc permissions in MAT MIS

Options import from TimeTabler

Have your say in where we go next and help us shape the UK’s most-loved school MIS by adding to our roadmap. 

Want to stay in the loop of all our new features? Follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn where we post the link to our monthly updates.

Amy Underdown - 29 June, 2022

Category : Blog

Top tips for Assessments in Arbor

With summer holidays on the horizon, now is the perfect time to start thinking about how you can get the most out of Assessments in Arbor, ready for the new school year. We know how important it is to get Assessments right, so we’ve put together our five favourite tips to help make the process

With summer holidays on the horizon, now is the perfect time to start thinking about how you can get the most out of Assessments in Arbor, ready for the new school year.

We know how important it is to get Assessments right, so we’ve put together our five favourite tips to help make the process a little easier. Keep an eye out for some of the exciting features that we’ve added this year!

1. Excel-like marksheets

Say hello to super speedy data entry in Arbor’s marksheets. Our marksheets have Excel-like functionality, including keyboard entry, custom filters, and copy and paste, making life quicker and easier for staff. 

School Assessment UK

Find out more here.  

2. Copy your Annual Policy

Schools can easily spend hours in the initial setup of Assessments creating baselines and entering targets. With our Copy Annual Policy feature, schools can quickly copy the previous years’ data, including student groups, Baselines and Targets for maximum time-saving.

Find out more here. 

3. Use a SUM calculation

By using a SUM calculation, schools can recreate things like AQA Maths or Question Level Analysis (QLA) within Arbor. This means that all your Assessment data can be in one place, rather than spread across different Excel spreadsheets. 

SUM calculation

Find out more here. 

4. Report card templates

Report cards are a key link between students, parents and your school’s Assessment system. In Arbor, you can use a report card template to set up your reports and then copy over the information you need when setting up for the following term. This means you can complete Spring and Summer reports in less than 10 minutes and easily share them with guardians. 

Want to use your own report card design and layout? Use Arbor’s ‘External Report Card’ feature to bulk upload report cards generated elsewhere, such as Microsoft Word, and easily share them with guardians and students. 

Find out more here. 

5. New marksheets

We’ve made it easier to create broadsheets with Assessment data in Arbor’s Custom Report Writer! Use our simple slide-overs to bulk add Summative and Ad Hoc Assessment columns to your reports.

6. Make Assessment work for your school

Every school’s Assessment model is different, so take advantage of the features and training that will most help your school. But don’t take it from us… hear from Kate Ferris, Data Analyst at Baxter College, about how their adoption of Formative Tracking transformed the way their school thinks about Assessment. 

school assessment uk

Click here to find out more about Assessments training, or to discuss how it can benefit your school, please contact your Account Manager.

Looking for more tips and tricks? Keep an eye out for our #ArborSpotlight series on Twitter and LinkedIn. for weekly pointers on how to make the most out of our cloud MIS.