School Meals & Payments
Breakfast Club
At Heathcote School and Science College we are committed to ensuring no child is too hungry to learn. We provide a free breakfast club based in the dining hall for pupils every day between 8am – 8.30 am. Please register your child with the school if your child wishes to attend.
Cashless Catering & Payments
To help make things as simple as possible, we operate a cashless payment system for school meals, trips and any other contributions that may be necessary. This has the benefit of providing peace of mind knowing that your child is not carrying around sums of money that may get lost. It should be noted that cash will not be accepted for school related payments.
We use Arbor payments and encourage all parents to support the school by using this system. Any amount of money can be paid into a pupil’s meal account via the Arbor app or by logging onto the Parent Portal in Arbor https://login.arbor.sc/. Meal top ups are accessed via Accounts under LBWF Catering. Any money spent on food and drink within school will be deducted on a daily basis. Free school meals will be automatically loaded each day.
Cashless catering operates by taking a biometric thumb print. Once a pupil’s school meal account has been topped up, they place their thumb on the reader at the till, which will allow them to pay for their meal. It should be noted that this is not a thumb print and will only be used for school meal purposes.
However, if you do choose not to have your child registered on the Biometric Trust-e Cashless System, a 4-digit PIN code will be allocated to them instead. Please note: the preference of the school is to use biometrics, as this is more secure and faster than any other method of identification than PIN codes which do not have the same level of security.
Downloading the Arbor app
You can download the Arbor Parent App on the Apple App Store or get it on Google Play. Please use the email address you have registered your child with at the school. You will be sent an email to verify your email address. Please ensure you click the link to verify your email to complete the set-up process.
Once your account has been set up, you will be able to view your payments and school meal balances and top up meals accounts.
Our Menus
Ensuring that your child has a wholesome and nourishing diet is important as this provides them with the fuel for their learning throughout the day and a healthy and nutritious lunch is an important element of this. We have worked hard to ensure that our school catering provider (Waltham Forest Catering) offers a wide range of nutritious hot and cold meals each day and we ask that you ensure that any food brought into school also meets these requirements, whether part of a packed lunch or otherwise.
If your child is using the school canteen then they will have a choice of hot and cold meals from the daily menu, including at least 1 vegetarian choice. Your child will be able to choose a main meal and dessert or a bottle of water from the daily menus.
Your child will also have the opportunity to purchase mini pizzas, samosa, etc. at morning break and will need additional money on their account to do this. All meat in our school lunches is halal. Click on the link below to view our menu.
Our menu changes twice per year and runs on a three week cycle. Please see Waltham Forest’s website for the current menus below;
Free School Meals
If your child is eligible, or you believe they are eligible, to receive Free School Meals then you will be required to complete an application via the London Borough of Waltham Forest. If your child is entitled to receive Free School Meals then their school catering account will be credited with the appropriate amount on a daily basis.
To find out further details about this application process and a copy of the application form then please click on the link to access further information from the LBWF website.
The free school meal allowance can only be spent at lunchtime. If your child wants to purchase food at break they will need to have funds on their Arbor school meals account to do so.