Arbor Education Bewertungen 

The Arbor system is antiquated by every modern IT metric.

When I tried to report an absence for my child, the school instructed me to “click the green button.” There is no green button. The interface relies entirely on color cues — a serious accessibility failure for anyone who is colorblind. I only discovered there was even a website (in addition to the broken app) after reading other reviews here.

It’s obvious this platform is a fork of an early-2000s open-source ERP. The design is dated and confusing: I can’t select my child by name — only by school. Yes, in 2025, I have to guess the correct child from a school list to reach the right profile. To switch, I must force-close the app because there’s no return option.
Do not have multiple children in schools using this system — it simply can’t handle it. In fact, it doesn’t even handle multiple children under one parent properly: you must create separate logins and passwords for each child.

The app’s priorities are equally baffling. The first thing displayed is how much money I owe — not attendance, not timetable, not messages. Typical actions like “report absence” are buried or nonexistent. The “Help” button simply opens a generic webpage — no context, no guidance.

The worst part: Arbor handles card payments yet provides no valid proof of purchase. No email confirmation, no PDF, no transaction ID, no date, no card reference — nothing that would qualify as a receipt.

From a parent’s perspective, there’s nothing positive to say. It’s a broken, outdated, inaccessible system that fails at every task it claims to handle.

Pointless i would be better of remembering my bloody homework than use this stupid crap

Not user friendly at all, much preferred parent pay

Absolutely ridiculous App. Way too difficult to find what you're looking for. Far worse than the Teacher/Parent App. You have to drill down far too many menus to get to simple tasks like booking meals etc. This App needs to be scrapped and completely re-done. It was definitely not designed with parents in mind.

Homework app is unusable by students because homework only is considered submitted when teacher records this. This means that students waste lots of time trying to identify what they have not done. Students need to be able to set their homework task as complete so that it disappears to another tab. Teachers can then confirm its submitted. We have just been told that Arbor will be assigning automatic detentions for ynsubmitted work but this can be due to teachers not confirming work as complete. Awful experience.

Logs you out all the time. Saying password incorrect then the reset email doesn’t arrive! Not very intuitive, especially if you have more than one child registered.

If there was anything less than 1 star, I'd definitely use that cos what sort of user unfriendly app is this! Logs me out for no reason, says my details are incorrect when they are infact correct, refuses to send a change password link, I could go on and on.
Very horrible experience!

unnecessarily complicated, had much better apps.
false information shown, logs myself and others out so we cant access the app in times of need.

Not sure it's worth one star. I have children at 2 different schools and this system is unavailable more times than it works. Reset password emails never send and you are stuck days without access. Total waste of money

Just so so so awful. The kids hate it, parents hate it. Are they paying schools to use this? Could they not pay me? I have absolutely NO idea how to create an app so I'm probably more qualified to do it than the designers. It is almost as if they TRIED to make it completely inaccessible and frustrating.

Absolutely abysmal experience. Sometimes refuses to log in despite both details being correct with it always flashing an error like 'choose school' when it gives you no options. The whole system is laggy and incredibly slow. Do not use.

Honestly a truly awful app. It added a payment for one of my children to the other child so I can't book the nursery wrap around in as it put the money on my other child who does not attend nursery.

Incredibly hard to use, they clearly have done absolutely no user accessibility testing which in 2025 should be a core part of any app.

It is so hard to use, takes you forever to find the correct place to pay for things, it doesn't have any kind of calendar feature just a huge list that is really hard to decipher.

Honestly I don't think I have ever hated an App this much. School aren't keen either on it probably because they get lumbered with having to sort stuff because parents are either struggling or unable to sort their own tech issues out, it is like reception now need to be a service desk analyst for a third party. Just awful!

I now need to explain to school what Arbor has done to them to book in wraparound care and somehow transfer the already paid money across to my other child!!!

Truly terrible app!!

Terrible app you are forced to use.
if you are here because you are fed up with this pathetic excuse for a portal. welcome to the club. there is no good reason to use it, other than being forced to

Absolutely terrible user experience, is not showing as mobile compatible, I was disappointed with parent pats lack of repeat feature but this is immensely worse!

thus app is awful it does not let me log on this is a new app in my school and tells me I cant change my password I recommend not using this app

If you live outside the UK and have a child in school in the UK, which many boarding schools do, Arbor Education will not work for you, the say that the US is unsafe for allowing access.

consistently awful app. can't believe schools routinely use it? dirt cheap maybe. bugs galore, latest one prevents me from updating meal choice.

From a school’s POV I am finding Arbor the worst MIS ever (and I’ve used a few) Spending hours and hours going round and round in circles. Just about ready to pack my lovely job in, all thanks to Arbor. Some of the people helping are lovely BUT they know very little.

Loads of the wrong information was on arbor for example my child’s middle name and loads more that I am unable to edit I think parents should of more editing control on the app.