Case study: The Austen Academy, part of the Catch22 Multi Academies Trust
The Austen Academy is a small SEN all-through school, specifically for children with autism. The school opened in 2021 and their initial system and processes were not working well and they quickly recognised that they needed fully integrated software to manage all payments, meals, trips and parent communications.
Dinners
Parents pay for their child’s meals in advance and their account is automatically debited once a meal is chosen. We can then run reports to inform the kitchen how many of each meal to prepare and also for the lunchtime staff, so they know which child has ordered which meal.
The kitchen also have their own log ins; I amend absences from the daily register, then they know exactly what the children are having, and it’s all completely paperless now.
Snacks
The Extended Day module works well for managing the orders and payments of midmorning snacks for our secondary aged pupils.
Trips
The school runs many field trips throughout the year and uses the Trips & Events module to manage this. Setting up new trips is quick, and it is really easy to create a cohort for the trip. Then using the Communications module, we can inform the parents of the new trip, ask for payment, and also seek parental consent using the integrated online form function.
