School Gateway 4+

Slow to update School messages

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.

Developer Response ,

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.

Does not work

Constantly explaining absences from school for my child and it does not get updated which goes as negative attendance against my daughters record. This application is a joke. The only reason it’s been invented and used is cause teachers can’t be trusted when parents had cash in for pupils to do things in school.
Now, if you wonder why parents phone up annoyed and disappointed in a system that’s put in place to make it easier for the pupils parents and teachers to communicate. Why does it feel so one-sided it doesn’t get updated the teachers don’t check in on it the developers need to shake the heads to absolute disgrace you’re looking after the next generation with an application and judging pupils through an application that’s not updated for instance seven unexplained absences that have all been explained but because teachers don’t check in on the application this is the knock on affect go back to put money in envelopes parents get victimised by an application and the school because the school can’t be bothered to check in on it. Delete the app is exactly what I’ll be doing. I could leave no stars and review this Poor app I would. doesn’t work as the teachers can’t be bothered to check on it so your child will continuously receive negative attendance due to laziness on the schools behalf.

Poor user experience

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.

Developer Response ,

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.