For information | All Headteachers, IT and Admin staff of LA maintained schools

We are now in the implementation phase of the project with 13 primary schools live on Arbor MIS and 23 schools shortly going live on Arbor Finance. We are pleased that all our LA maintained primary schools have now elected to migrate to the new Arbor solution.

As always with a project of this scale and complexity, there will be learning points as we progress. We would welcome feedback from schools. Please share any feedback by contacting Andrew Brown ([email protected]) or Lizzie Winter ([email protected]).

If you have a live issue with MIS, please raise an incident for the schools IT team to investigate. This can be done by logging a call via the IT Service Desk on 01473 265555 or emailing [email protected].

Schools Choice are providing support for Arbor Finance, if you need any support with Arbor Finance please contact 0300 1231420 option 1, or email [email protected]. Both support teams have progressed through Arbor training and accreditation to provide the requisite support.

As advised previously, the MIS migration of Wave 2 and 3 schools has been postponed until after Christmas and will be restarting in January. We will be communicating revised dates shortly. We also plan to schedule a series of regular drop-in sessions for each wave so that schools can raise any concerns/questions they may have.

Successful projects require a combination of people, process and technology to ensure that project objectives and benefits are met. We recognise this is a big change for many schools and that there will be concerns during the transition.

As previously advised the current SIMS and FMS solution provided by ParentPay/ESS will cease at the end of March 2025. Suffolk County Council will not be providing any options to extend or provide any ongoing support beyond this date. We will be providing guidance on which data will need to be retained before the end of contract, as access to any remaining data on SIMS/FMS will not be possible after the end of March.

Contact: [email protected]