FEATURE: PARENTAL ENGAGEMENT
How to avoid chance in parental engagement
actually – maybe – be handed to a parent at the end of the school day?
In 2020 our research with schools, multi- academy trusts and local authorities found that only nine per cent of schools wanted to improve their electronic systems and processes and then we all lived through Covid. By 2021this had predictably leapt to 27 per cent. We explored what was driving this change of heart in our 2022 white paper, “Writing the Next Chapter in Education”*, and a key factor was the importance of digital technologies in supporting effective parental engagement.
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n our annual look at parental engagement this month, we speak to Sarah Rowe, former school business manager and account manager at ParentPay and Schoolcomms, for her perspective on how to get the most out of your school’s communications with parents.
Back in the pre-digital age, parental engagement used to be something of a game of chance. When I started my career as a school business manager, you’d send a paper letter home with pupils at the end of the day, and just hope for the best. Would it be scrunched up with some tissues in a blazer pocket? Would it languish, forgotten, at the bottom of a schoolbag? Or might it
Putting in place the right technology is critical but success is built on some key principles. The last thing schools need is to invest in technology and feel they have swapped paper for the digital equivalent of the bottom of the school bag – unread, unseen or just ignored emails or messages.
When parents have so many demands on their time – and so many messages coming at them from so many different sources – is it any surprise that they don’t pay close attention to all of them? Here are my 10 practical tips to help you use your technology to attract and hold parents’ attention.
1. Match the channel to the update There’s no point putting a message on X (formerly Twitter) telling parents about a forthcoming inset day – only a handful will see it. Similarly, if you send every parent a WhatsApp message itemising which school clubs are running on any given day, parents will quickly stop
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reading any of your WhatsApp messages. Let the medium fit the news – a photo of the school fête on Facebook or Instagram, for example, a text message for an early finish and an item in the class newsletter for the school clubs.
2. Avoid accidentally excluding anyone Although families with children typically do have access to the internet, schools have no way of knowing how consistent or reliable this access is and this is a big barrier to going paper-free. Whatever school-communications tool you are using make sure it can be accessed online as well as via an app, meaning that those parents who don’t use a smartphone are not left at a disadvantage.
But it’s also important that schools can highlight those children who need a physical letter to be sent home. These could include children from separated families, or those who spend weekends with carers – in both cases, they might not always be going home with the parent listed by the school as their primary email contact. Using school-communication apps can help gather the information in the best way to correspond with all carers, to ensure that no family is overlooked or left out.
3. Keep it jargon-free
Again, try to read your communication through the eyes of the recipient. Will your intended reader know what PPA is? Or the difference between MATs and Sats? If you talk about SPaG, will they assume you mean school dinners? Spelling out what you mean will ensure that
February 2024
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