Communication

Groupcall Xpressions App

View your child’s information on your mobile phone!

An exciting new service is now available for parents to ensure communication between the school and yourselves is easier and more effective. Groupcall Xpressions is a new service created by the award-winning school communication company Groupcall Limited.

The app is completely free of charge to you and can be installed on your mobile phone or tablet. It currently supports both Apple iOS and Android devices (with Windows mobile to follow) and you’ll be able to see information for your children.

If you have children in different schools and those schools also use Groupcall Xpressions, you will be able to view information on multiple children within the same app.

What do I need to do now?

Please ensure we have your correct mobile number and email address on our school database (correct spelling is essential) to ensure you can use the new app as soon as it is available. A form is attached which you can complete to update your details. You’ll need to  make sure you keep these details up to date in future to maintain access to the service.

Once you ensure the school has your current email address and mobile number (correct spelling is esstential), you can then download the app from your app store by searching for ‘Groupcall Xpressions’

Once installed and set up you may receive messages, emails or texts about:

∙ Emergency school closures

∙ Pupil absence notifications

∙ Exam reminders (where appropriate)

∙ Reminders about meetings and after school activities

∙ Parents evenings

∙ Special school events and newsletters

∙ When Report Cards have been given to pupils

∙ Expected time of arrival when returning from a school trip

∙ Invitations to a meeting

Groupcall provide a dedicated support website for parents to also help you get up and running with Xpressions, or answer any common questions parents have on using the app: http://parents.groupcall.com

 

Parent Portal

Parent Pay  – Online School Payments                                          

Glasgow City Council have introduced an online payment solution called ParentPay into all primary and secondary schools across the city. ParentPay will be used to pay for all school trips, concert tickets, uniforms, meals etc and will enable us to remove all cash and cheques from the school.  This also includes a new cashless catering solution with further details listed on the ‘ParentPay Meal Selection Parent Guide’.

Details of what ParentPay can offer both you and our school are listed below.

How do I get started?

We will send you an activation letter containing your activation details to enable you to set up your ParentPay account once your child starts school with us.

If you have more than one child you can add them to a single account, providing one login for all children at ParentPay schools.  Please activate your account as soon as possible.

What does ParentPay do?

  • enables you to pay for trips and other items such as tickets, uniforms, clubs etc
  • offers a highly secure payment site
  • gives you a history of all the payments you have made
  • allows you to create a single account login across all your children that attend a ParentPay school
  • shows you all items available for payment relevant to each of your children
  • emails a receipt of your payment to the email address you register
  • offers you the ability to set automated payment reminders

How does ParentPay help you?

  • gives you the freedom to make payments to school whenever and wherever you like
  • stops you having to search for cash to send to school
  • allows you to set up an alert when your balance is low
  • gives you peace of mind that your payment has been made safely and securely
  • helps with budgeting; payments are immediate, there is no waiting for cheques to clear
  • payments for many of the larger trips can be made by instalments up to the due date
  • you will never need miss a payment, or have insufficient credit, with automated email/SMS alerts
  • ParentPay is quick and easy to use

How does ParentPay help our school?

  • reduces the administrative time spent on banking procedures
  • keeps accurate records of payments made to every service for every student
  • reduces paper ‘waste’
  • allows for easy and quick refunds to be made back to the payment card
  • improves communication between the school and parents concerning payments
  • offers a more efficient payment collection process, reducing the amount of money held on school premises

More information can be found on the ParentPay website at www.parentpay.com.

Parent Pre Selection of School Meals

Guide to Ordering Meals via ParentPay

A – for those pupil’s that have an agreed medical diet, their personal menu daily choices are not on the system.  The pupil & their parents will continue to agree with catering what the pupil will eat from their menu.  On the system there are only the choices to record a meal required, packed lunch, eating out of school, or a packed lunch for a school trip.

B – the school office will set-up trips on ParentPay, if parents should book a packed lunch for the trip (or the pupil can bring a packed lunch from home), this should be pre-ordered.

C – once live, parents can pre-order meals up to 4-weeks in advance.  Meals cannot be booked on holidays, no menu choices will be visible on these days. Meals can be selected until 08.30am for each day.

  • Step 1 – Log on to your ParentPay account. Click on the ‘Make Meal Bookings’ box under the child you would like to book meals for
  • Step 2 – Ensure the drop down box is set to ‘Lunchtime’. Click ‘Make or View Bookings’
  • Step 3 – This will take you through to the menu where you can select the meals for your child. You can navigate through the available weeks, to select meals in advance, by clicking on the box under the date.
  • Step 4 – Once you have made the selections you must click ‘Confirm Bookings’ in the bottom right corner. If your child is UIFSM or FSM you will still need to follow through to payment screen, however no payment will be taken from your account
  • Step 5 – You have now confirmed your meal bookings and will see the following screen.

If you would like to view the pre-selections you have made, you will need to go back through Step 1 & 2 to reach the menu screen. You will see an option to ‘Download Meal Selection Report’, click this option and open the downloaded PDF file. This will show you all selections you have made for your child over the coming weeks. You can print this out and stick it on your fridge to remind yourself/your child what meal choice they are having on each day.