Keeping Parent Data up to date - how do you do it?

[RobFrain]

Afternoon

 

We're currently holding a Parental Governor election at the school which involves sending a letter to both sets of a child parents. This is the first time in a long time we've had to do something like this and it has shown to us that a lot of our data is out of date. Especially year 10 and 11 students.

How do you keep this data up to date? We still send out the collection sheets from the report in sims, however we don't get many replies back. What other systems are schools using? I understand that many online systems are not allowed to write back this data inso Sims unless its been checked and approved by someone?

[jmak]

I try really hard to avoid being negative, but I've tried pretty hard at this and have never managed to get parents to engage.

 

We send an email and paper letter to every parent at the beginning of every school year. The email says please reply to this email if you need to change any of the details contained in the letter which was sent home with your child. The letter has a report from SIMS and says "you were sent an email today - if you haven't received it, we need to update our records. Please let us know if you need to change any other details."

 

We didn't get a single reply this year, paper or email....

[bobsmith]

attach a sweet to each one?

 

In all seriousness, it's gotta be a bit of carrot and stick.

 

Do you offer your parents some kind of benefit, like a parent portal to your MIS.

[PhilNeal]

Get the pupil's to write the letter if its a primary school!

[jmak]

attach a sweet to each one?

 

In all seriousness, it's gotta be a bit of carrot and stick.

 

Do you offer your parents some kind of benefit, like a parent portal to your MIS.

Like: If you give us up to date details, we'll let your child take part in school trips, whereas if you don't they'll have to sit in a classroom doing written work and building up a bitter hated of you?

[Banjo]

All returns even will be entered into the PTA prize draw and you and your child could win a ipad

 

Photo of prize goes here !

 

Give a copy to the kids in form time so they can see the letter and you'll get more returns.

[Sylv3r]

We've used both SIMS Learning Gateway and SchoolCOMMS and parents have the option to contact the school and update their information electronically. As you mentioned, it goes into a moderation queue waiting for someone to check and update SIMS where necessary. Your never going to get all parents sending in their information, as you don't with the paper data collection sheets but at least this way, they don't end up being stuck to the bottom of the students bags.

 

Every couple of weeks a make a post on our Facebook and Twitter pages asking parents if they have changed any of their details to get in touch which does have some impact.