Communication with parents is essential for any school; you want a quick, efficient system that is very cost effective and increases parental engagement – without absorbing extra staff time.
Getting everything in one easily accessible place is the first step – best achieved by an app with news, messages, the calendar, policies, newsletters, and more. This provides a more engaging service for parents than SMS, email, or online parental communication systems which can prove to be time consuming and costly. Added to this, these systems rely on parents being at their computer to check messages.
Research from the Office for National Statistics reveals that people are more likely to pick up their smartphone than login to a website from a computer. So why not step into the 21st century and communicate with your parents via their mobile phones?
In addition to ease of access and increased effectiveness of parental communication, the Piota school apps have a number of benefits to schools:
- The app interface is fully customisable – your app won’t look like that of the neighbouring school
- It links directly with your school website, meaning that you won’t have to enter information in twice
- It’s fast: you can get a message out to the whole school, or a targeted group of parents, in seconds
- It is saving schools thousands of pounds
In addition to bringing efficiency and a significantly higher parental engagement rate, the Piota school app also opens up the possibility of a whole new kind of message: a celebratory one! With no cost to send messages and pictures, and the ability to target specific individuals, teachers are able to update parents on the successes of their children.
Testimonials
“The easy to use system means that After School Club bookings have risen by over 25% compared to the pre-app days, boosting income by a handy £1,000-£2,000.” – Business Manager at Hargrave Park Primary School
”We’ve saved between £1500 and £2000 due to purchasing less paper and reducing photocopying costs to send letters and information out to all the parents; the most valuable saving is the time that the office staff no longer have to spend photocopying and stapling hundreds of sheets together. This has freed up their time to work on other office tasks.” – Office Manager, Willow Farm Primary School
“The app has saved us money. It is so quick to get the information out to parents. No photocopying newsletters – just straight out to the target audience.” – Office Manager, Lexden Springs Primary School
“We love our app! Massive improvement to home-school communications and great support from the team!” – Headteacher at North Bridge House Nursery and Pre-Prep Schools
“This has significantly reduced the cost of postage and text messages. The annual cost of the mobile app is very low; it actually costs us more to send out two whole school letters! It saves us money on postage, paper, printing and labour for enveloping and stamping the mail.” – PA to Headteacher, Baysgarth Secondary School
“One of the most popular things we now do is to celebrate the children’s successes. If a school team completes something successfully, or a child has done something noteworthy, we send this out via the app. We’ve found that there is no better way to promote the success of the school community and help parents understand their child’s learning experiences and progress.” – Headteacher, St John Evangelist Catholic Primary School
“Being able to send unlimited notifications means there is hardly any missed communication” – Assistant Headteacher, Treetops Special School
This year allow parents to access the information they need in a format that is convenient to them.
Contact the Piota team for a free quote for your school today!