Coming soon - online payment system for school meals

Many parents face a frantic rake through wallets and purses in the morning for loose change to pay for school meals, milk and trips. But the last-minute scramble for coins will soon be a thing of the past.

Parents and carers of children at secondary schools are already familiar with cashless catering, where you can put cash on to your child’s entitlement card at a time that suits you through the council website. Soon that convenience will be available to parents of primary school pupils, but without asking them to carry entitlement cards. 

We will soon be launching a new digital system that will enable parents to log into an account and order school meals for their children in advance. With the new system, parents will not only be able to make informed menu choices, but payment for meals can be taken online. Payments for milk and trips will also be possible through the online account, including the option to make payments in instalments for larger expenses. Payments can be tracked electronically meaning that you will be able to see when payments are due and how much is still outstanding, which should make managing your budget easier. 

Councillor Shamin Akhtar, cabinet spokesperson for education and children's services, said: “The benefits of this new online system are clear. Not only will it be quick and easy to use, but it puts parents in control of their finances. Benefits to the council are also significant. Banks currently charge double to process cash and cheque transactions, but by undertaking more payments online, payments are processed quicker and at less cost to the council. Over time, this represents a significant cost saving to the council, meaning that we can make your money go further to deliver essential services.”

The school payments system will be launched in 2018.

Protecting your information
Protecting your information – and money – from hackers is extremely important to the council. That’s why we’re going beyond the minimum expected security measures to give you peace of mind when you use our online services to pay for things. For the new parents/ carer portal, we’re investing in new security arrangements. This will allow us to be confident we’re doing as much as we can to ensure the new portal and our existing schools administration system ‘talks’ to each other without fear of someone breaking into that link. This link allows us to keep your information up to date and help you save time when you’re logging in to use the new portal.