School Gateway

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This is the only way I can give my child dinner money as their school don’t accept cash payments. Since he started at high school in September he has been spending his dinner money like it’s a bottomless pit! I’m not sure if the school or the app developers set the minimum payment of £10 allowed to be added at any one time, but I’ve allowed my son to spend £2.50 per day on his lunch but he is taking advantage and spending more. Obviously he has been punished for this, but the facility to cap the children’s spending or the ability to add any amount of money to the account would be really helpful for parents like me who can’t afford to keep adding endless amounts of money to their child’s account! If someone from the app teams could advise me if there are any plans to implement the above that would be great. Thanks

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This is the first review I’ve done so bear with me... I was told to download this app when my kids moved up to secondary so have had it a year and half now. I use it mainly to send and receive messages to School, to check on achievements/consequences, attendance. The first year, with one child was adequate (not brilliant, but did the job). Now my youngest is on there, the whole process of communication has slowed down incredibly. School say they’ve sent messages to me but I don’t receive them through the app until at least a day later. I’ve sent countless messages through the app that are either received late or not at all, by School. I’ve tried signing out and back in again, checking for updates, but it never improves. The app says achievements to a certain date, but those achievements don’t show for some time (2 weeks at worst). It is getting quite frustrating now and I think I need to revert back to email to communicate. I’ve given 2* because I do find payments effective and on a par with regular bank payments (not bank transfers which take 2 hours), and is very easy to use. That will be the only reason I continue to have the app as the school is cashless now.

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This app has one of the poorest user experiences of any app that I use regularly. The developers are very slow to improve it. I’m delighted that a payment history feature has finally been added. It’s a very clunky interface but at least I can now check which payments I have already made. But it would really help if the emails confirming payment actually included details of what was purchased. Schools must sell tickets all the time, yet it seems it’s only possible to specify a total amount with a comment saying how many adults and concessions that includes. Until recently there was then no way of checking what was purchased. Most messages from school include phone numbers, email addresses or web links. Frustratingly it is not possible to click on these or even copy them. Users cannot even copy the whole message even though I often want to forward it to the relevant adult or child. If I could I would disable app messaging and continue to receive messages via text but I need to use the app for payments so I’m reluctant just to uninstall it.

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Had numerous problems with this app. Thought the updated app with more info was brilliant, but the payment system is ridiculous. If you pay via card details (which you have to type in every time) it takes a ludicrous amount of time to show in account, seriously in this day & age why does it take over 12hrs to get into the account?? The only response from the school is “top up 12 hours in advance by card or make sure cash via machine is done before the beginning of school” there must be numerous parents that have problems with this, as the school emails all the time, reminding us children without the card or money on the card won’t be fed, so top up at least 12 hours before use. If you pay via bank details (on website) it shows instantly but takes the payment from your bank a week later, messing up my banking. Top up machine in school often not working. Plus why is it a minimum of £10 each time? For my son to see his timetable he needs same access info as I have? (Which is probably why you need to enter your payment details every single time?!) So many problems. Mainly meaning lack of lunch funds, thus lunch - as the school doesn’t accept cash, this is a huge issue.

Hi. My secondary school has been using the app for communication only, and now my primary school have started using the app for communication, payments and consents. After a couple of issues recently where the app kept telling me I couldn’t log in because it was open on another device (it wasn’t), I am now happily using this app. However. One huge improvement for me would be to add a basket or checkout function. Currently if I am paying for dinner money, and a school trip I have to enter my card details in for each thing I am paying for. It would be so much easier if I could add to basket and then add card details once only at the end. Thank you.