Texting parents

[kennysarmy]

Texts to parents - why do you do it?

 

Was it justified on cost grounds or was it just a nice to have?

[pcstru]

It is a good way to communicate certain things. It is generally immediate - so reasonably effective for notifying parents of absences or reminding them of parents evenings. It is reasonably cheap - much more so than a letter. We found phone numbers were more likely to be up to date and more widely used than email. It is quite 'personal' which helps strengthen the relationship between parents and the school. We sometimes combine it with (say) reports which are sent home with the student, to let the parent know it is coming which can stop the report never leaving the students school bag.

[synaesthesia]

It's a very good way of getting information to parents, especially when Little Johnny often never gets the letters sent home with him. Although it can be prohibitively expensive when done in bulk, there's plenty of ways to get the same point across such as the school messaging apps which can still use text as failover.

Plus quite a few folks these days can barely look away from their phones so sending a notification to the screen burning into their eyes is a surefire way of getting a point across!

[Oaktech]

We use Groupcall because of it's integration with our MIS and because it's cost effectiveness for our size.

 

We use it to communicate things like school closures, as a way of communicating with parents who are unable to answer a phone at work, or who have ignored phonecalls... things like that!

[pete]

^ As the other two really.

 

Making someone's phone vibrate/squawk is a more reliable method of delivering (non-confidential) info

 

It's also site-agnostic. Our current solution still works if the site burns down to the ground.

[kennysarmy]

OK, so what's the best SIMS.net integrated solution?

[pete]

Define "best". We use InTouch. It mostly works OK but of late they've had datacentre issues, a couple days outage for inbound messages in response to InTouch messages sent to parents and there's currently an issue between Capita and Yahoo* regarding InTouch messages that the latter is treating as spam in some cases.

 

In terms of "products someone at SIMS has had to apologise for by email to customers", InTouch is the front-runner for 2015.

 

 

*I can't recall if BTInternet are using Yahoo as the email backend these days.

Edited July 14, 2015 by pete

[SovietRussia]

We use teachers2parents and to be fair, it works really well. We get a good response rate when a text it sent.

[timbo343]

Another +1 for teachers2parents. We use the email side of it too, ok teachers have to have another logon to remember but otherwise we use it daily. Cant really fault their support either, every time i've rung up, they've been helpful and even shown me what to do incase the problem/request occurs again.

[jdoyle]

Used GroupCall at my last place as it has email and text, linked to SIMs, knows about primary contact, secondary etc and supports a number of languages. Also a feature to block sending to certain students contacts (e.g. expelled, educated off site)

 

Generally had more mobile numbers in SIMs than email addresses. Usual annual update process (plus post Xmas reminders)

 

Comms isn't a once off activity in many instances and involves a mixture e.g. a school trip abroad may involve :

 

a. letter or email home (with copy of letter on the website) with details of payment amounts, dates, meetings etc

b. email or text to confirm place has been allocated to little Boy/Girl/Apple of Eye

c. text to remind about meeting tomorrow evening (meeting details should be on website)

d. text to thanks everyone who attended (plus message on website)

e. text reminder re payment due/payment overdue (plus message on website)

f. reminder about school trip departure tomorrow - be at school at xx:yy for coach departure at zz:uu (plus message on website)

g. text to confirm arrival at destination and to remind about school trip blog page (linked from school website)

h. might send text during the trip but blog would be main comms tool

i. text to confirm on way home

j. text to say ETA at school

blah blah etc (school facebook and twitter accounts may also be used)

 

Google Analytics used to monitor website hits as and when texts directed parents to the school website. Generally showed good data.

 

We did use text to notify parents re a day trip that couldn't get to it's destination and to let them know the students would be back in school earlier than expected. Useful for snow days/school closures and any message that needs to go quicker than a letter.

 

With library books overdue we went the other way. Text reminders about overdue books. After a certain number of texts it stepped up to reminder letter and then invoice if the letter had no response.

 

As per pcstru post #2, text to parents when reports were going home with the students.

 

We made the decision not to use it for absences; this went through the Student Advisors who telephoned as appropriate.