School Payments

Payments to the school should be made via our secure on-line system, https://thornden-school.uk.arbor.sc/. All meals, trips and curriculum resources will be made available for payment by this method. If you are experiencing any difficulties with this payment method, please contact our Finance Department.

​Cashless Canteen

The canteen’s cashless system has brought about a number of important benefits:  

• A faster, more efficient service, so that queuing time is reduced.  
• Parents/carers can pay on Arbor in advance for students' meals, as well as monitoring their child's purchases and remaining balance. 
• Parents/carers can have confidence that dinner money is being used for the intended purpose.
• Students entitled to free meals will have a daily credit automatically applied to their account so that the entitlement remains completely confidential.  
• The system places a daily spending limit on each account. 
• The system can be used to encourage ‘healthy eating’ and parents/carers if they so wish can monitor their child’s choices!  
• It is a secure system and students can only access their own account.

How are students and staff recognised by the system? All students and staff will be registered by biometric measurement and photograph.  The biometric measurement involves the measurement of a number of points on a finger.  This information is then converted and stored as a unique number.  Parents/carers, staff and students can rest assured that the fingerprint information held cannot be re-converted back into an image of the fingerprint, nor can it be used for any other source for identification purposes. Consent for this can be given via the Arbor App or Parent Portal.

N.B. if for any reason you do not wish to use this system, the student can always bring a packed lunch to school, or be given a pin to access their account in the canteen.