Phase: Primary
Local Authority: EA North Eastern Region
Cashless school dinners
The Principal at The Diamond Primary School in County Antrim, knows the challenges created by cash in a school environment. Even in a small school, tens of thousands of pounds will need processing by the school office, taking up precious resources.
The Diamond Primary School decided at first to focus on making school meals cashless. The Principal said: “We are saving 10-15 minutes a day, about an hour a week, per teacher. They were having to take the cash on a daily basis and mark the meal choices each morning in the class.”
The teachers aren’t the only members of staff who have experienced the benefit of ParentPay. The Principal further elaborated: “Meal management in the dining hall is much easier as catering staff can see who has ordered what meal and therefore they are confident that the right children get the right meal, reducing food wastage.”
Rolling out ParentPay
Once parents had become accustomed to using ParentPay to pay for dinners, The Diamond Primary School began to use the system to collect money for everything else.
A feature-rich payments system such as ParentPay offers schools a variety of ways to make payment easier, resulting in reduced debt and happier parents. The Principal specifically liked the ability to pay in installments for higher-value trips as it’s then easy for staff to see which parents haven’t yet paid in full and need to be reminded. The ability to collect permission and consent is also invaluable to a busy school and has improved safeguarding and GDPR compliance.
Reducing parent debt
Parent debt, an issue faced by far too many schools, has also become far easier to manage with ParentPay. The Principal recognised the role of ParentPay’s cashless school payment system in reducing parent debt. With a clear record and audit trail of payments, the process of debt collection and recording became much easier.
Cashless success
ParentPay know that support and training are an integral part of the success of any new technology. The Principal noted: “Their support has been really good, they’ve been helpful if ever I’ve needed to pick up the phone for help.”
The result of implementing ParentPay has been that The Diamond Primary School is now virtually cashless, having put over £30,000 through ParentPay last year, and 99% of their parents are using ParentPay on a regular basis. Staff can focus on more important tasks and parents are better equipped to manage their payments.
Download the PDF version of The Diamond Primary’s School journey with ParentPay.
