Parental contact via SMS or eMail

[TheCrust]

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

[BatchFile]

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!

[JOrdan01070]

We use a company called groupcall

 

Groupcall - Parental Communications

 

and this also pulls data from cmis.

[ninjabeaver]

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

[Sylv3r]

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 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

[CSNM-Carl]

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

[rad]

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

[kmount]

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.

[leco]

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.

[BaccyNet]

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

[laserblazer]

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.

[Edu-IT]

Keep Kids Safe Communication Project – By schools for schools

 

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

[EduTech]

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

[grinch]

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

[Rwhite-groupcall]

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

[IrritableTech]

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.

That's interesting. We're currently trialling KKS for free but haven't yet sent out bulk messages. Just a few dozen each day for absent kids with no known reason for absence.

 

TheCrust... just remember, any of these systems are only any good if the contact details are up to date. In my experience parents frequently change their mobiles and don't think about updating the school.

 

KKS does message mobiles, landlines and email address' in turn if they're all on your sims server

[kmount]

terrorvis,

 

It's been fairly faultless until that time when I imagine lots of people were doing the same thing!

 

It continues to be used each day to send absence messages/voicemails.

[NewOrder]

One of the problems with text messages is parents changing mobile every year and having a new number. The parents you need to contact are the ones that do not inform you when they change address, telephone and mobile. You only find out when there is an emergency and you try to contact them.

 

With that in mind a telephone number for them to ring is better in the circumstances of general information but for trauncy I would say text messages is preferable.

[Jobos]

One of my schools uses Teacher2Parents and the other uses ParentMail. After seeing both ParentMail wins hands down.

[Ric_]

We are currently doing the 'free' trial of KeepKidsSafe. It seems pricey to me!

 

All the systems I've seen are 6p per message plus a couple of grand a year. That's with the exception of JANET txt which is only 4.5p per message and no annual fee!

 

The Janet service doesn't have the same SIMS integration as others but I reckon that a few carefully crafted reports will easily do the job.

[Edu-IT]

That's interesting. We're currently trialling KKS for free but haven't yet sent out bulk messages. Just a few dozen each day for absent kids with no known reason for absence.

 

TheCrust... just remember, any of these systems are only any good if the contact details are up to date. In my experience parents frequently change their mobiles and don't think about updating the school.

 

KKS does message mobiles, landlines and email address' in turn if they're all on your sims server

Can somebody clear up whether or not this system sends to ALL numbers the school has recorded in SIMS or is there the option to send it to only one?

[Jamman960]

I trialed a few around christmas, mainly School Comms, Parent Mail, Clarion Call & School Post.

 

I found School Comms annoying as you had to use their interface to send messages, it'd do stupid things like miss a line when you press enter etc. Also it wouldn't show the actual email addresses it was sending to, instead it'd tell you to look at the pupils account within sims.

 

The web interface for clarion call was basic in appearance and overly complicated to use for non technical staff.

 

Parent Mail was one of the cheapest we found however they force an email template upon you - every message has the schools name in big bold letters at the top and the email background is colour coded based on the urgency... green for not important, red if an immediate response is required. I just got the impression they had too much of the primary school attitude... as if parents aren't going to read mails from the school unless we make it clear how important the message is or have the schools name in big bold letters etc

 

My favorite was School Post, we mainly wanted to use the system to email parents. School Post is fully customised for the school where as all of the others carry their associated branding... this was important for us as an independant school. School Post is basically a CMS with email notification for various groups. any publications the school sends are shown in the web interface and you can choose the response options including simple web forms or direct email reply's.

 

They all offer text messaging at around 6-10p per message, most except School Post require you to buy "packs" of 1000+ messages, school post will invoce you based on how many you use each month.

 

Cost wise Parent Mail was the cheapest followed by School Comms, Clarion Call and School Post. Unfourtunatly in the end our head told us to forget the whole thing and get the receptionist to build a list and mail our parents from outlook

Edited February 16, 2009 by Jamman960

[rh91uk]

We don't use it, but at one of my recent Network Manager forums we had a rep from Schoolcomms come down and demo and it was really effective. Really nice piece of software - unfortunatley I just couldn't sell it to work!

[Ric_]

Can somebody clear up whether or not this system sends to ALL numbers the school has recorded in SIMS or is there the option to send it to only one?

 

Just the primarty contact AFAIK and there's a function to show who doesn't have complete info.

 

Like I said though, some reports that generate CSV files and the Janet-provided system is far cheaper.

[IrritableTech]

Can somebody clear up whether or not this system sends to ALL numbers the school has recorded in SIMS or is there the option to send it to only one?

The system contacts the primary contact. By default by text (if a mobile number exists) then by voice message to a land line, finally by email. You can choose to change the order per pupil if you require, or stop a particular contact method.

 

If the system can not get in touch with the mobile or phone after three attempts (which are all charged) it places the number into a bad numbers list, and will not try again.

 

I have to agree with Ric_ the system is fairly expensive. £200 a month plus messages at about 6p/message. Our attendance officer is sure it can save a lot of her time, and improve attendance significantly. I'm still waiting to be convinced.

 

Our LEA provides a text messaging service, which I want to trial also. They suggest that messages will be coming down to about 3-4p soon. Then it's just writing a report to upload.