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Food is available for purchase at breakfast, morning break and lunchtime from our main Atrium restaurant and the outdoor Pod. The Sixth Form has its own café in the Sixth Form Common Room.
Cashless Catering
St John’s operates a cashless catering system for the purchase of food at school, and have opted for a biometric system that recognises each student by their thumbprint. As a parent you can manage your account online, through ParentPay. ParentPay allows you to monitor spending, see what your child is ordering in school and add money onto their account.
Use the buttons below to view sample pricing for both the main Atrium restaurant and the sixth form café, a sample menu, information about biometric regsitration and the Free School meals scheme, and a link to ParentPay.
Atrium Tariff Sheet
Sixth Form Tariff Sheet - Coming soon
Menu Information
St John's Marlborough Sample Menu
Cashless Catering & Biometrics FAQ
Cashless Catering System is a solution which is purpose designed to meet the ever-evolving needs and demands of the catering provision, required by today’s schools and academies. The Trust-e Cashless Solution allows academies to be better able to provide their students and staff with a faster, more efficient and more appealing meal service.
Biometric is simply a method of identifying an individual person. The Trust-e Cashless System uses an algorithm-based scan, which reads between 50 and 130 points on the finger/thumb. It is not a fingerprint in any way, shape or form and is of use only in the Cashless System.
The information of a pupil or staff member, who has been biometrically registered, is stored on a secure biometric controller within the academy, which only your provider, Nationwide Retail Systems, can access with permission from the academy. Once an account is credited, the pupil or staff member places their finger/thumb on the Biometric Reader, which looks up their account and allows them to purchase items using only this method of identification.
Any amount can be credited to an account by ParentPay. All parents have a ParentPay account generated by St John’s. At any time, you can credit your account for catering. Once an account has been credited, the monies cannot be withdrawn and must be spent on the academy meal/break services.
This can be done in three ways. There will be a valuation Smart Station in the atrium which displays the current balance when the account holder places their thumb on the reader. Secondly, the account holder can ask what their balance is when purchasing at a till. Finally, this information can easily be seen through the online ParentPay site.
Yes – the amount your child can spend in one day can be changed by written request.
As an “emergency” a child will be able to have the value of one meal as an “overdraft” for one day. They will be told that their account is overdrawn so that credit can be added to it. This overdraft facility will not be extended.
All free school meals entitlements will be entered. The Cashless Catering System will, on a daily basis, automatically allocate the appropriate accounts with the free academy meal amounts. Pupils with FSM entitlement always remain anonymous as all account types are accessed in the exact same manner, regardless of whether paid for or not. Please note that any monies not spent from the daily free meal allocation will not be carried over to the next day.
No – due to the extensive security on biometric templates, no-one will be able to access your child’s account. If your child is using a 4-digit PIN code, which someone obtains and attempts to use, the photograph shown at the terminal will alert the operator of a fraudulent sale.
Yes – all allergy records registered with the academy will be entered on to the Cashless System. When pupils attempt to purchase an item, which contains ingredients that they are allergic to, the system will alert the operator and prevent them from selling the chosen item.