Couldn’t make the event and want to know what ArborFest is all about? We’ve put together a small roundup of the day, stage by stage below. If you were able to join us, remember to keep sharing your insights and photos from the event using #ArborFest.

The Main Stage

James and Sonia opened the day on The Main Stage, which was followed by an inspiring talk on leadership and collaboration by Diana Osagie, a showcase of our 2025 Product Vision, and a panel of Arbor users and Alex Jones (Ofsted) sharing how schools can get Ofsted-ready with Arbor.

The final talk of the day was from our keynote speaker, Baroness Mary Bousted, Chair of the Teaching Commission. Mary shared exclusive insights into the work of the Commission and highlighted its strongest recommendations to transform teachers’ working lives, in the context of the recruitment and retention crisis.

We finished up the day with our hotly contested Customer Awards, celebrating the customers who collaborate with us and challenge us to make Arbor even better.

The Innovation Stage

Over on The Innovation Stage, Arbor customers shared their insights and top tips on how school and trust leaders can both get started and make a measurable impact with AI. This was followed by a panel of data leaders (including Andrew Proctor, AWS) discussing which questions organisations should be asking of their data.

We finished the day on the Innovation Stage with ‘A data geek’s guide to improving attendance’, in which three Arbor schools and trusts shared their data analysis insights which have surfaced the hidden reasons for absenteeism.

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The MAT Stage

Our MAT Stage was back by popular demand, opening with a panel on how exactly trusts can operationalise a merger.

Our second panel of the day featured three MAT leaders and Arbor users asking the question: what should a MAT of the future look like, which led to discussion around belonging, inclusivity and flexible working.

We closed the day with members of both the Arbor and SAMpeople community sharing how, why and when to join up your MIS and HR at trust-level, and how the joining up of systems has supported in the delivery of their overall trust strategy.

The Show and Tell Stage

Introducing, The Show and Tell Stage!

We designed this stage to bring to life on-the-ground insights from school leaders, and to open discussion around how to get the best out of the Arbor Suite.

It was standing room only for the first talk of the day, where school and trust leaders shared the ‘wow’ moments and advice which had made an immediate impact in their first 12 months of using Arbor.

Next up, the SAMpeople Team gave a show and tell demo of SAMpeople, for trust leaders and schools who are thinking about investing in HRIS.

And to finish off the day, we had an exciting hands-on session, led by Bex Campbell, in which ArborFest attendees got together in groups to pitch and vote for the next feature to be built in Arbor! The feature in the winning pitch has been added to our roadmap.

Roundtables, Arbor Labs Live and more!

The best bit about ArborFest is getting hundreds of school and MAT leaders together in one place, in-person. We had sessions running throughout the day to bring together these leaders to share best practice, see new features and collaborate with the Arbor Team! This year, as well as our Roundtables, we introduced Arbor Labs Live!

If you can’t tell, we’re already very excited for next year. Click here to see even more photos.

The post What you missed at ArborFest 2025 appeared first on Arbor.

And we are proud to be the UK’s most-loved MIS for the third year running

Showing our 100% commitment to transforming the way schools work for the better

See the survey results of over 1,000 UK schools on what they think about their MIS

More of a words person? You can read what our customers have to say about us here. 

Follow us on X/Twitter and LinkedIn for more insights and weekly customer testimonials. 

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Sources include: NPS survey, MIS survey carried out and published by The Key and Finnemore Consulting

The post Arbor by numbers appeared first on Arbor.

1. Laugh

Everyone has heard the phrase “laughter is the best medicine” but did you know that over the past few years there has been growing research to back this up? There is now a proven link between reduced stress and laughter. A good laugh has been proven to:

• Stimulate our organs
• Activate and relieve our stress response
• Soothe tension
• Boost the immune system

So my first piece of advice is to make sure you find time over Easter to speak to a friend or family member who never fails to crack you up. Failing that, be sure to watch a funny film or some stand-up from your favourite comedian. 

If you really want to integrate a good laugh into your wellbeing routine, why not follow in the footsteps of This Morning’s Phillip and Holly and try out laughter yoga.  

2. Make time to connect with others

Bonding with loved ones, either through touch, conversation or a shared hobby, can increase our feelings of trust, calm and safety. These help to alleviate the body’s stress responses which can improve both our mental and physical health. 

Things as basic as a small gesture of kindness, a longer than usual hug or taking a walk with someone close to you can have a profound effect on how easy you find it to cope with life’s stressors. 

3. Nature 

Spending time in nature has a range of positive impacts to our overall wellbeing and is a great first step to stress management.  Getting in touch with nature will look different for everyone and doesn’t need to be time consuming or require you to travel. If you’re a city dweller, your local park counts!

To reconnect with your natural surroundings, you could:

• Take a walk in the park
• Try cloud-watching or find a local viewpoint
• Take photos of beautiful scenery and make them your phone or computer background
• Listen to recordings of natural sounds such as rain before bed
• Buy flowers or house plants to bring nature indoors 

Check out this article from Mind for more information and ideas for how to feel the benefits of nature. 

4. Learn to say no 

This might be one that some of us (myself included) find very difficult. But therapists and other mental health practitioners advise that the practice of saying no and setting firm boundaries are crucial parts of self care. If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the thought of lots of socialising for the first time in a few months, consider how might be better for you to spend your time to feel your best.

There’s no right way to spend a vacation – the ultimate purpose should be to leave you feeling de-stressed and ready to face the new term. Remember – this isn’t selfish. Managing our own stress levels and maintaining healthy boundaries will ultimately have a positive impact on our relationships too. 

5. Try a stress reduction challenge 

Why not extend your stress management efforts to after the Easter break, as well? Throughout April people across the country are getting involved in Stress Awareness Month. The way to take part in the 30 day challenge is to pick one action you can take for your physical, mental and emotional wellbeing, and to do these every day. 

It takes 30 days to turn actions into habits, so this 30-day challenge will maximise your chances of turning useful wellbeing techniques into long-lasting behavioural change. 

I hope you have a wonderful and relaxing Easter break and look forward to welcoming you back to summer term.

Want to learn more about Arbor MIS? 

We’d love to show your school or MAT how Arbor could help you work faster, smarter and collaborate more. Arrange a free demo here, get in touch at tellmemore@arbor-education.com, or call 0208 050 1028. 

The post 5 ways to unwind and de-stress during the school holidays  appeared first on Arbor.

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What we’re doing

• ScholarPack, Integris and Arbor have been working together as one team for the past few years. We’ve used that time to build a deeper understanding of what primary schools are looking for in an MIS, both by speaking with 100s of customers, and by training our teams to work across all our MIS systems.

• We initially thought that primary schools wanted the choice between streamlined, admin-focused systems (ScholarPack and Integris) and a more feature-rich, strategic system like Arbor. What we’ve found is that schools overwhelmingly choose Arbor for their primary school. In fact, Arbor is now used by 6,000 primaries vs 1,100 using ScholarPack and 1,500 using Integris, and it’s chosen by 7 in 10 primary schools switching MIS.

• Because we can see that primary schools increasingly prefer Arbor, and because it offers features that we know many ScholarPack and Integris schools want, we’ve made the decision to discontinue ScholarPack and Integris in February 2026. We will instead move all schools using ScholarPack and Integris to Arbor MIS. 

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Why we’re doing it

• First and foremost, we’re doing this because we believe Arbor is a better MIS for schools. It will plug feature gaps, reduce the number of systems schools need, and save staff time. 

• Arbor includes all the same features as ScholarPack and Integris plus extras you can’t get in ScholarPack and Integris like report and comms scheduling, SMS and email, clubs and trips management, and more. 

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How we’re doing it

• We’ll be partnering with all schools using ScholarPack and Integris, and supporting them to move to Arbor by February 2026

• We have written to every school today to let them know, giving them plenty of time to plan and make the move

• Schools will be supported throughout by our dedicated in-house teams, or their local partner, who know all three systems inside out

• There is no material change to contract terms as part of this move. The price, the product functionality and service levels are similar or improved, and so the move to Arbor Core is allowed under procurement law

• If a school wants to change the terms of their contract, then they should of course follow procurement guidelines where the contract value is over £214,904, per the terms of the Procurement Act 2023

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What next for Arbor?

• We’re really proud that 8,000 schools have now chosen Arbor as their MIS. We take our mission to transform the way schools work seriously, and are constantly working on new features, updates and innovation to support the schools we work with

• We’ve got a packed roadmap for Spring/Summer 2025, including upgrades to Arbor Payments, a brand new Report Library for bringing all your favourite dashboards together, and an integration with Smartgrade 

• Meanwhile, we’re continuing to release new Arbor AI features monthly, including Arbor Canvas (create any report you want, from just a few words!), and Auto Absence (manage attendance follow ups automatically, from voicemail to logging an absence to informing staff)

• And we’ve just announced that we’ll be working with Habitude to bring their features into Arbor – meaning you’ll soon be able to create and edit workflows in Arbor, connect Arbor to key tools like Google and Microsoft, automate forms, and manage eSignatures and approvals

We’re excited for this next chapter, and are looking forward to helping all ScholarPack and Integris schools with the move! If you work at a school using ScholarPack or Integris and have questions, get in touch with us at groupaccountmanagement@arbor-education.com.

The post Announcement: The future of ScholarPack, Integris and Arbor appeared first on Arbor.

The Vale’s primaries, secondaries and special schools will join our community of 8,500 schools, 700 MATs and 50 Local Authorities. We’re excited to go on this journey with the Vale of Glamorgan team as they use Arbor to transform the way their schools work for the better. 

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How Arbor MIS is designed to support schools in Wales

Arbor was recently rated the best MIS in the UK for its functionality, integrations and intuitiveness. On top of these features that schools in England already know and love, we are building features specifically tailored for Welsh schools, including:

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The UK’s most popular MIS

Last term, 3 in 4 English schools who switched MIS chose Arbor (Source: DfE Census). We are thrilled that the Vale of Glamorgan has joined our ever-growing community and are looking forward to making a difference in their schools.

To find out more about how to meet us and to hear from schools who have already made the switch, visit our dedicated hub for Welsh LAs. 

The post The Vale of Glamorgan chooses Arbor MIS for their schools   appeared first on Arbor.

A big thank you to all 7,930 schools in the Arbor Community who have made this year a great one.

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The post Arbor Wrapped 2024 appeared first on Arbor.

Plus, we’re delighted to be sharing our stand (Stand SJ31) with Arbor Finance, SAMpeople and TimeTabler, so you can see the full Arbor suite in action.

As usual, there are several ways you can meet us…

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1. Join us for free lunch at Arbor’s Leaders’ Lounge

We’re pleased to share that our Leaders’ Lounge is back by popular demand, co-hosted with SAMpeople. We’ll be at Tapa Tapa (outside the ExCeL Centre) on Thursday and Friday, 10am-4pm. Open to everyone, no matter how much or little you know about us – look out for an invite in your email inbox! If you haven’t received an invite, make sure to get in touch at hello@arbor-education.com

This is the perfect chance to find out how Arbor is helping schools and MATs to transform the way they work. Hear directly from several of over 7,800 schools that have already switched to using our MIS.

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2. Join us for breakfast at Arbor’s Leaders’ Lounge

If you’re more of a morning person, you’re welcome to join us for a pastry and tea or coffee at our Breakfast Briefings in the Leaders’ Lounge to kickstart each day of the event.

On Thursday, we’ll be hosting our Product Roadmap Reveal Breakfast. Join Arbor’s product team to find out what’s coming out next in Arbor MIS, over a coffee and delicious breakfast pastries. Then, split into user groups to meet other Arbor users and give us direct feedback on our plans.

On Friday, join us for Arbor Customer Breakfast: 5 ways to get more ROI from Arbor MIS. Join Our customer team will share the top 5 ways schools and trusts can get more ROI from Arbor. Customers can then get 1:1 advice on the best next steps for your school or trust, over coffee and delicious breakfast pastries.

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3. Visit our stand

We’ll also be at stand SJ31 in the main BETT arena. Come by for a demo, chat to our friendly team, or join our Arbor classroom where we’ll be showcasing Arbor’s features.

This year, we’re excited to be exhibiting as the Arbor suite. As well as the UK’s most popular MIS, you can find out more about Arbor Finance, SAMpeople and TimeTabler.

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4. Come along to our Tech in Action talk

Want to see how Arbor could transform the way you work? Join us at the Tech in Action theatre on Thursday 23rd, at 10:30, to see our very own Tim Ward presenting five ways that Arbor can make a measurable difference to your school or trust.

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Looking forward to seeing you there! Any questions? Get in touch with us at hello@arbor-education.com

The post Four ways to meet us at BETT appeared first on Arbor.

Welcome back to the second half of the autumn term! We hope you had a good start to the autumn term and have been discovering some of our latest exciting improvements and brand-new features across Arbor MIS.

The Arbor School Management suite brings together best-in-class, specialist tools to support operations across your whole school or trust, and streamline the most time-consuming tasks and processes your staff face today. 

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What’s new across Arbor?

Settlement summary report

As part of our improvement to make payment reconciliation a less manual and time-consuming process, our new ‘Settlement Summary’ report lets you group payments by Description, Accounting Code, or Customer Account Type. Letting you can easily reconcile weekly payouts according to your school’s needs. Learn more

New integration with helloData

We’re excited to partner with helloData to give you even more ways to visualise and analyse your assessment data! With our new integration, schools can set up their assessments and enter marks in Arbor, then use helloData’s interactive reports to analyse performance and identify your school improvement priorities quickly. Learn more

Tes Timetable (Edval) integration improvements

For schools using Tes Timetabler, we’ve made improvements to your timetable importing process. You no longer need to end all timetable slots and re-import your entire timetable for small changes. Now, you can master your timetable in Tes Timetable and import only the necessary changes to Arbor. Learn more

New BI Connector data sets

You can now access even more MIS data in your BI tool via our BI Connector. We’ve added a new Attendance Summary dataset to our BI Connector, giving you a student-level summary of year-to-date roll call attendance.

What’s live in Arbor Labs

Arbor Labs is the home for beta releases in Arbor. Test and influence our latest innovative features before anyone else. 

Current live Arbor Labs include:

Student Dashboard – NEW

Arbor Student App

Venn Diagram Analysis

Ask Arbor Cover Suggestions

BI Viewer

Ask Arbor Custom Report Writer

Ask Arbor Absence Notes

Ask Arbor Intervention Setup

Make sure to visit the Arbor Labs page in Arbor Labs to join a beta today. 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.

The post What’s new in October? appeared first on Arbor.

We launched Arbor in 2011 to address a very clear problem: more than 60% of a school’s time, attention and work is spent on non-teaching tasks. Reporting. Data. Analysis. Communication. Admin. All weighing staff down, and getting in the way of teaching and learning.

We recognised that most non-teaching work is done in a school’s MIS, so we built Arbor to help – as an MIS that helps schools work better, not just record data.

Since then, we’ve gone on to help over 7,000 schools and 400 trusts to transform the way they work. The question is: where do we go next?

Introducing: The Arbor School Management Suite

Our starting point was to go back to where school staff – SLT, teachers, admin staff, trust and LA central teams – are spending their time. Bringing Arbor in had helped them tackle a significant part of their workload challenge – but an MIS doesn’t cover everything. To tackle it all, we wanted to look at the way a school operates holistically.

So – over the past 18 months, we’ve welcomed a number of new products into the Arbor family: Arbor Finance, TimeTabler, and SAMpeople. 

Our goal was to bring together best-in-class systems that are the backbone of your school’s operations, and have the biggest impact on your workload everyday: MIS, HR, finance and timetabling. 

Together, Arbor MIS, Arbor Finance, TimeTabler and SAMpeople simplify your team’s most time-consuming processes, bring all your staff and student data together in one place, and equip everyone with the tools, insight and support they need to work at their best every day.

So today we’re excited to relaunch Arbor as the UK’s most popular MIS and school management suite. Our mission remains the same: to transform the way schools work for the better. But the impact we can now have is much broader and deeper. 

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Bringing the new Arbor to life

In fact, with all four products in our suite, we also took the time to revisit what we stand for this summer. We realised that school workload challenges aren’t just about efficiency and outputs, but start at a cultural level. With a broader set of products in our suite, we want to help raise expectations around what the world of work in schools should look like, and create more supportive and effective work environments overall as a result. 

Put simply: when people feel less stress and more joy at work, they stay in schools, and create the best outcomes for students. That’s the change we’re committed to enabling by launching the Arbor School Management Suite.

So part of our relaunch today is about bringing some of that joy to life in our visual identity. We worked with East Midlands Academy Trust, who have been using Arbor since 2023, to capture the way Arbor makes them feel at work. We brought bolder and brighter greens into our colour palette. And we commissioned illustrations to articulate some of our key promises around collaboration, equipping all staff, and making data understandable.

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What does this mean for schools and MATs?

Ultimately, our relaunch today is about better helping schools, MATs and LAs to do their best work. And in fact, with most SIMS contracts set to renew in April 2025, now is the best time to get in touch and find out more about the ways Arbor can help.

Here’s a quick reminder of the best way to get in touch:

We’re excited to start helping schools, MATs and LAs* in even bigger and better ways – let us know what you think, and we hope to see you at an event soon.

*Right now, we’re focused on supporting state and publicly funded schools to transform the way they work. We’re currently not able to support the independent school market.

The post Introducing: The Arbor School Management Suite (and our new look!) appeared first on Arbor.

What is a service fee and what does Arbor do? We wanted to start by demystifying some of the jargon on the fees different MIS providers pay to LA teams. At Arbor, we use the term “service fee”, but other providers variously call them a “referral” or “introduction fee”, a “rebate” or “revenue share”. Whatever the name, all these fees have historically been for similar amounts.

At Arbor, we pay a low, per-school fee to Local Authority teams for introducing schools to us, and for taking on the support of schools who subsequently move to our MIS. We pay this fee to recognise the time, effort and resources LAs invest in becoming accredited on our platform, and to acknowledge that they handle all first line support for the schools they work with rather than our own internal support team. We pay the fee to LAs on the condition that their schools are aware of our relationship, and that such payments are made transparently in line with their codes of practice. We never ask LAs to recommend Arbor as part of our agreement; the choice to move to an alternative MIS provider, or remain with its existing provider, always lies with the school itself. 

Service fees have existed in the MIS industry for over a decade – originating with SIMS, who has been paying a recurring rebate fee to LA support units to invest in supporting their schools. Over time, other MIS providers (including Arbor) have replicated these fees – not to incentivise LA teams to switch, but to ensure they are not blocked from switching, as otherwise they would effectively lose money for each school who migrated to alternative MIS providers.

We believe investing in our support partners to provide a better service to schools is the right thing to do, and ensures schools are better off both financially and operationally. LA support teams have a vital role to play in ensuring schools can make a successful transition between systems, so we accredit them to provide support and training on behalf of Arbor, as they know the local context of their schools best. All Arbor partners have the option of investing any fees either in improving the service they provide to schools, or passing it on directly to schools via a discount on what the school pays for Arbor.

We are transparent about our commercial relationships, and require our partners to also be transparent to avoid any implied conflict. We list the types of commercial relationships we may have with our accredited partners in our standard terms and conditions with schools, and on our public website. We also put a contractual obligation on our partners to disclose the existence of commercial relationships with their schools via our Partners Agreement. We would encourage all MIS providers to be equally transparent to ensure an open and competitive market.

Ultimately, when a school switches from their legacy provider to Arbor they save on average £5,000. We want to ensure a transparent and open market where schools can choose the provider they want, without any legal challenge or financial disadvantage. We exist to provide an outstanding product at the most competitive price that allows schools to save money on software and admin, which schools can reallocate to teaching and learning. If a school doesn’t want to choose Arbor, or wants to switch away, then they will always be able to do so at no disadvantage. We are open about what we do, and why we do it, and would encourage the MIS sector as a whole to adopt the same level of transparency.

The post Response: Demystifying the relationship between LAs and MIS providers appeared first on Arbor.