Parental contact via SMS or eMail

Morning!

After the recent bad weather forced sudden closure onto us, our head has asked us to evaluate systems for improving and speeding parental communication – seeing as the radio stations were so busy announcing school closures, nobody could get through to notify them of any more....

Does anyone already use any system for automating parental contact via SMS or email?

If so, what do you use and what are your impressions of it in terms of cost to run, reliability, management features, how it ties in to your MIS etc.. etc..

Thoughts and comments appreciated.

Thanks in advance!




Jim

there's a thingy that plugs into SIMS that does it... I can't remember what it's called though:doh: school comms or something I think. Your local SIMS support team (or failing that SIMS in Bedford direct SIMS - Schools Information Management System - Capita Education Services) will be able to advise you.

As for us, after reading this thread: http://www.edugeek.net/forums/general-chat/30279-telephone-answering-systems.html I've signed us up for a Sipgate 0845 number that parents can call and hear a recorded message. That's free :) the SIMS one almost certainly isn't!

We use a company called groupcall

Groupcall - Parental Communications

and this also pulls data from cmis.

At my last school we used Call Parents - Welcome and also Truancy Call - Welcome. This links in with most MIS software.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by TonyRidal

there's a thingy that plugs into SIMS that does it... I can't remember what it's called though:doh: school comms or something I think. Your local SIMS support team (or failing that SIMS in Bedford direct SIMS - Schools Information Management System - Capita Education Services) will be able to advise you.

As for us, after reading this thread: http://www.edugeek.net/forums/general-chat/30279-telephone-answering-systems.html I've signed us up for a Sipgate 0845 number that parents can call and hear a recorded message. That's free :) the SIMS one almost certainly isn't!

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We use it here to send school closures, exam reminders, parents evening info to our parents here and it has gone down really well.

As soon as they see snow outside they sit by their phone waiting for the school is open / closed txt message.

I tend to be public enemy number one when I text the staff to get their lazy arses out of bed - school is open :D

Take a look at Home Contact, it's run by one of our clients.

We have something called Parent Mail, dont know anything about it other than thats what its refered to.

We use Keep Kids Safe which has on the whole been OK until the first snow day when the SMS went out at 7am and didn't start to arrive until lunchtime!!!

Think lessons may well have been learnt as a result.

My school uses www.teachers2parents.co.uk. On the worst day of the snow it failed:( Has worked OK since then but don't have any info on it other than I keep getting texts - after I have got ready to go to work.

We are due to be trialling GroupCall soon with our CMIS system. I must admit though that I dont plan on putting my mobile number anywhere on CMIS if they decide to use it to alert staff of closures, its taken me long enough to get it off our old MIS:D

On the recommendation of a forum member I set up an acccount with sipgate. We have a local number and we leave a daily update message. It will handle multiple calls and the parents think it's brilliant. And it's free.

Keep Kids Safe Communication Project – By schools for schools

Integrates easily with SIMS. Not sure about other MIS'.

We use Truancy Call at the moment, seems to work very well :)

We have been using Groupcall for about a year now. Worked very well keeping our parents informed during the recent bad weather. Pulls details from SIMS database.

Create groups and publish them onto groupcalls server for access off site via their website (just need to remember login details) Also good cancelling clubs etc. Keeps admin ladies happy

Groupcall are currently doing free trials and remote demonstrations of our Parental Communication System untill the end of March. If your school is still looking for a system then check out the website and get in touch. Groupcall - Parental Communications