FEATURE: PARENTAL ENGAGEMENT
How much is too much, when it comes to parent- friendly communication?
Children are much more likely to make good progress in school when their parents are kept up to date with the topics being covered in class and they have a clear understanding of which areas of the curriculum their child might need extra support with at home. So, what are the best ways for schools to keep
parents up to date, without overloading them with information or adding to staff workloads?
Too many systems A major culprit of ‘information overload’ can be the sheer number of communication systems a school operates, which can have an adverse effect on parental engagement. We recently conducted a survey of parents
I
n our annual look at the issue of parental engagement, Education Today hears from
Winston Poyton, director at IRIS Software Group, who talks about the importance of communicating with parents efficiently and effectively.
who use IRIS Education’s ParentMail parent engagement tool, which revealed a disconnect between what schools believe and how they are operating in practice. The results showed that 62% of schools felt using two or more systems to connect with parents was detrimental to effective
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engagement. And yet, a significant 45% admitted they had fallen foul of this trap and were operating more than one parental communication system. Using separate systems for emails, texts,
cashless payments and booking parent evening appointments means multiple login details for parents to remember, which can add to confusion and leave parents feeling disengaged. Managing all your parental communication in one place not only creates staff and cost efficiencies, but dramatically improves parental response rates too.
Keep on Track Targeted messaging that is easy to access and relevant will help establish the important bridge between home and school. My advice is to make sure you keep parents on side, by being ‘on task’. Think who, when, why and what. Who do you
need to communicate with? When is the best time to reach them? Why do you need to message them? What do you want to tell them
February 2020
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