School Overview
Ballymacash Primary School sits on the edge of the suburbs in Lisburn around ten miles south of the Belfast, with just under 400 primary aged children and another 52 in the nursery.
The assignment
Teachers would find themselves collecting and recording money for dinners and trips which could take 20-25 minutes of classroom teaching on a Monday morning. There was then the office time of collecting it all up and the added time of somebody having to take it to the bank where they were paying £600-700 in bank fees a year. Ballymacash were already big users of Teachers2Parents, using it to send text messages to parents about all aspects of school life. After considering a range of parental payment options, the school decided to trial T2P’s sister product SchoolMoney to handle cashless payments across the school.
How did SchoolMoney fit in at the school?
After taking on a trial of SchoolMoney, Stephen fully committed to the process by ensuring his staff were well looked after and supported, and that parents received regular encouragement. Overall, this meant they were able to make the transition in just a few months.
“We started with trips before moving dinners over to cashless” says Stephen, explaining their process. “We did dinners in four phases to help our office get their heads around it, starting with year 1 and then moving through the other year groups. We started the process at the February half term and had everybody switched over by the end of May.”
“The support line is fabulous, no matter what the issue is we lift the phone and they’re brilliant. I don’t want to go back to paper as it would be a step back for all of us. Where we are now, everything runs like clockwork. If you were to tell me that in September we were going back to paper, I would be devastated!”
Ballymacash Primary School
