The document discusses improving communication between schools and parents. It describes how one school implemented a mobile app to streamline communication, finding greater parent engagement and participation compared to email. Teachers can easily send class-specific information and forms through the app. The app also allows automatic integration with school calendars and news, as well as direct messaging from the school to parents. The school has found the app saves staff time while improving information access and dialogue between home and school.

1. Maintaining and improving communication between
home and school is always a high priority in schools and
it is usually high on the list for any school improvement
plan. Yet the seemingly easy task of giving effective,
simple and non-threatening means of two way
communication is difficult to get right for everyone.
Face to face communication is the best form of
contact. One of the delights of teaching at key stage
one for me was those few seconds of interaction with
parents as they drop off or pick up their child. Sadly, this
is not always practical, and as the child becomes more
independent, the parents appear at the door less and
less, until they leave the playground altogether. This is
how it should be as pupils mature, but it means that
communication between home and school becomes
harder.
Many schools are very good at broadcasting school
life into the community via email or letters, and parents
may have a wealth of information. Yet other parents
may feel bombarded by so much information coming
through their inbox or in their child’s bag especially if
they cannot filter what is relevant to them.
Social media has helped, with many schools
using Twitter or Facebook to bring about better
communication, yet not every parent has, or wants, a
social media presence. Many schools are reluctant to
engage in two way discussion with parents in the public
arena of social media.
I was delighted to see that my son’s school has found
the perfect solution. Almost every parent will have a
smart phone these days and the school has designed an
elegant Apple and Android app together with Piota. As
a parent, I’ve been using it since September and I have
been very impressed by what it can do and, being of a
geeky-techie nature, I wanted to find out more.
I talked to the school about the reason why they have
retired their email based system. ‘Engagement’ was the
answer. While there was uptake of around one third of
parents when the email system was introduced, this
had fallen as parents cancelled the emails and even
more simply didn’t read them amongst the clutter in
the average bulging inbox. Because up-take was low
the school felt that it needed to continue sending out
paper letters and bulletins in addition to emails, making
the whole enterprise redundant. Now engagement has
risen with over two thirds of families using the app,
more joining everyday, and in many cases both parents,
grandparents and even social workers and other
agencies downloading the app.
My son’s class teacher is delighted with it. Parents
can set filters so they only get information specifically
for them. Each teacher has a login to the web-based
management system, which means that they can send
out information to parents of just the pupils in their
class, such as homework details, trip information and
even permission slips forms, which the parents can
electronically fill in and send back through the app.
Posts can include formatted text, images and links to
other websites so they can be crafted and customised
as much as is needed.
Martin Burrett recently discovered the benefits of school apps when his son’s school implemented
a system that proved extremely effective in streamlining communication between teachers and
parents, and is now about to implement a Piota school app in his own school.
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Creating a
AppySchool
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Creating a
AppySchool
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2. I was so intrigued about the possibilities for my own school, that I contacted
the developers. I met with the Piota team and they talked me through the
management system. The online platform is reminiscent of school virtual
learning environments and adding content was just like writing an email. The
management system looks similar to the app with each of the same sections
across the top of the webpage, so the interface is intuitive and easy to use.
The app can save time in the school office too. It has an events calendar
which can be fed automatically from the main school calendar and filtered
to what is relevant to a particular parent. New information and news from
the school’s website can be automatically published to the app and filtered
by the software’s artificial intelligence to the right sections. Schools can
highlight new or important content with an alert in the phone’s notifications
area so important messages can never be missed. Schools can also create
new content, messages and alerts, which do not appear on the main school
site. I immediately thought about publishing the best posts from my class
blog to the app to make it more accessible to parents.
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The app isn’t just a broadcast system. The Piota team are continually
developing the app and parental voice is a key area. Parents can already
respond to surveys and they can contact the school via forms within the
app. For example, my son’s school has an ‘absence report’ form so parents
can notify and give information to the school if their child will not be in. In a
few months Piota are adding a function to allow schools to send messages
to individuals and also allow individuals to reply. Soon schools could send
dinner money receipts, parent’s evening times, and quick updates about a
pupil’s good work or behaviour in class. I would be excited to shift the home
reading record onto the app so parents can easily state which books have
been read and how many times, rather than sorting through their homework
diaries and making notes, which is a task which takes up far too much of my
time. With per pupil prices starting from not much more than the cost of a
homework diary, I hope that the diary can be replaced altogether.
There are plenty of opportunities for secondary schools, with specific
homework tasks and reminders sent to the system, which could be
personalised to each group of pupils, and reminders or notifications to their
parents. With exams looming, it could be easy to send revision reminders,
notes or questions through to pupils, to help focus them on a particular
strand which needs further practise. Key reminders about school events,
parent’s evenings, awards and progress could easily be added within the
system, helping bridge the continually difficult lines of communication
between schools and home.
Our pupils are with us in school for a small fraction of the day and creating continuity and understanding between
home and school to improve their learning opportunities is essential to ensure pupils reach their full potential.
Only with superb communication between home and school can pupils do their best. As a parent the app has
brought me closer into the school life of my son, and the school is doing more in less time, more effectively, at
reduced cost, with less headaches. Apps are the way forward for school communication and I’m looking forward
to introducing a Piota App in my own school.
www.piota.co.uk
01702 780051 @piotaapps