School Gateway 4+

This is the first review I’ve done so bear with me...
I was told to download this app when my kids moved up to secondary so have had it a year and half now. I use it mainly to send and receive messages to School, to check on achievements/consequences, attendance. The first year, with one child was adequate (not brilliant, but did the job). Now my youngest is on there, the whole process of communication has slowed down incredibly. School say they’ve sent messages to me but I don’t receive them through the app until at least a day later. I’ve sent countless messages through the app that are either received late or not at all, by School. I’ve tried signing out and back in again, checking for updates, but it never improves. The app says achievements to a certain date, but those achievements don’t show for some time (2 weeks at worst). It is getting quite frustrating now and I think I need to revert back to email to communicate. I’ve given 2* because I do find payments effective and on a par with regular bank payments (not bank transfers which take 2 hours), and is very easy to use. That will be the only reason I continue to have the app as the school is cashless now.

I'm sorry you're having problems with the app. Please contact your school who can raise a case with our Support team to resolve the issue.

This app has one of the poorest user experiences of any app that I use regularly. The developers are very slow to improve it.

I’m delighted that a payment history feature has finally been added. It’s a very clunky interface but at least I can now check which payments I have already made. But it would really help if the emails confirming payment actually included details of what was purchased.

Schools must sell tickets all the time, yet it seems it’s only possible to specify a total amount with a comment saying how many adults and concessions that includes. Until recently there was then no way of checking what was purchased.

Most messages from school include phone numbers, email addresses or web links. Frustratingly it is not possible to click on these or even copy them. Users cannot even copy the whole message even though I often want to forward it to the relevant adult or child. If I could I would disable app messaging and continue to receive messages via text but I need to use the app for payments so I’m reluctant just to uninstall it.

Thank you for your feedback. Detailed email receipts and the ability to buy performance tickets are on our wish list for future improvements
. If you have more than one person who would like to see app messages and you each have your own email address, which match those held by the school, you will be able to set up your own School Gateway accounts.

I have to use this app to book before and after school clubs. It also sends messages from the school. It’s overall been a nightmare. Initially lots of teething troubles, and issues with set up. Meaning that kids were not booked into clubs when we thought that was so. Check out process for paying for clubs is long winded. You have to add it to basket, then go to basket and pay. The issue is you can’t check the date you have purchased for in the basket. Which means it is a headache, if you want to book lots of clubs and pay for them in advance. Why can’t I pay on the club selection screen? So I’m sighted on the date I’m paying for. Anyway, it eventually got sorted out. But now I’m getting a failed connection error and can’t sign into the app. I’ve deleted the app and reinstalled multiple times. Nothing, now I’m going to have book before and after school care piece meal in person. This will irritate the school and me. My wife’s version of the app seems to be working. Yet more hassle with this app to resolve. If it wasn’t school direction that I use it, I’d have binned it off months ago.

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