Arbor Education

About Arbor Education

Arbor Education provides a cloud-based Management Information System (MIS) designed to help schools and Multi-Academy Trusts (MATs) streamline operations and improve data analysis. The company was founded in 2011. James Weatherill is a co-founder and the current CEO. His background includes a Master of Business Administration from Imperial College London with a focus on venture capital and entrepreneurship.

Arbor's core product is its MIS platform, which integrates various school management functions into a single system. This includes tools for attendance tracking, behaviour management, assessment and progress tracking, payments, parent communications through a dedicated app, and statutory reporting like the school census. The platform aims to reduce administrative workload for staff, allowing them to focus more on educational outcomes. For Multi-Academy Trusts, Arbor offers a centralized MIS that provides a trust-wide view of data from all constituent schools, enabling consistent reporting and workflow management.

The business model is subscription-based, with pricing varying by the size of the institution and the package chosen. Arbor serves primary, secondary, and special schools, as well as MATs across the UK. In December 2020, Arbor was acquired by The Key Support Services Limited, a provider of intelligence and resources for education leaders. This acquisition brought Arbor under the same parent company as ScholarPack, another MIS provider, making the combined entity the largest cloud-based MIS provider in the UK. More recently, in July 2024, Arbor acquired Fusion Education People Solutions, the owner of the HR system SAMpeople, to integrate HR and MIS functionalities for schools and trusts.