Introduction: Where it started
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:
| I want to… | We recommend… |
| ….review Arbor in my own time | Watch a pre-recorded demo online at any time – click here to find them |
| ….join a live demo with other schools or MATs | Sign up for a monthly drop-in demo here |
| ….meet you in-person | We’re at these events this term: – 7th-8th November: CST Annual Conference – 20th November: Schools And Academies Show, Birmingham – 28th-29th November: ISBL Conference – 26th-27th November: MAT PN Midlands |
| I’d like to talk to someone to ask questions first | Book a call with our Partnership Specialist team here |
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.
