Effective and efficient communication is key in all schools and ensures the full school community is connected. Parents are keen to be involved in their child’s care while at school, and it’s important to maintain open lines of communication between teachers, students, parents, and school management.
The benefits of effective communication in schools extend into the full school community. However, for any school, the main priority is providing students with the best education and care possible during their school career.
Keeping the school community connected is key to achieving this goal. Studies suggest that the majority of teachers are communicating with parents almost weekly, so it’s vital to facilitate this and help teachers maximise efficiency where possible.
That’s also why it’s important to have varied lines of communication and ensure that all those that have an impact on a child’s time at school are aware of the latest updates and can have a positive impact on a student’s learning.
So just how important is school communication? And how do you ensure you’re reaping all the benefits?
- How to communicate with your school community
- Improve academic performance
- Boost student wellbeing and behaviour
- Keep the community engaged
- Prioritise teacher time management
- iSAMS for effective school communication
How to communicate with your school community
Staying connected is easier than ever thanks to today’s technology. We all have smartphones in our pockets and use a variety of methods to communicate with each other, including email, text, call, and social media platforms.
The best school comms make the most of all of these methods and platforms to keep parents, teachers, and students up to date. By utilising the tools available to us, you ensure maximum accessibility for those outside the school walls.
Your software should provide you with all the tools you need to effectively communicate with all those at your school. Begin with the most common methods, including email and text. These are the best ways to reach a wider portion of the community. However, it’s also important to bear in mind that these may not be the preferred methods for all parents. This is especially important as your community of both teachers and parents gets younger.
Apps and portals provide parents, students, and teachers with a self-service option for key school information. You can also make use of push notifications and alerts for a quick way to share updates with those involved with your school. iSAMS offers a selection of portals and apps for the full school community, ensuring that the right people can access the information they need, any time.
Social media is also a popular option among parents, and provides a platform for sharing information widely and quickly. Research also suggests that 76% of parents that use social media believe that they get useful information via their networks – it’s important to meet them in the online spaces that they’re occupying.
Social media platforms are also a great way to market your school at the same time as communicating with your current parents, driving admissions and growth.
iSAMS also offers an SMS gateway, enabling schools to contact parents via text message. While there are more options for communicating with parents than ever before, it’s almost a guarantee that each student’s guardian will have access to a mobile phone. The SMS gateway is easy to set up and use, and offers a range of functionality to enable you to schedule, authorise, send, and record SMS activity.
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Improve academic performance
Your students are the driving force behind your school’s academic performance. All those in the school community are continually striving to ensure that students can achieve the best results in their exams, thereby boosting your school’s reputation, too.
To achieve this, your students, parents, and teachers need access to all the vital resources and information that guide learning and provide the best environment for achievement.
Apps like iStudent ensure that your learners can stay on top of key school information, including news, events, timetables, reports, and exams. Similarly, iParent and the parent portal provide parents with access to detentions, Rewards and Conduct reports or notifications, school reports, school contact details, and more.
It’s particularly important that awareness of a child’s school performance extends to parents, as they can encourage more positive performance outside of the school walls.
Apps and portals like this keep all parties informed and help students and parents push for the best performance possible across their school career.
Boost student wellbeing and behaviour
While providing students with the educational resources and lesson time that they need to excel is important to overall performance, they also need to be supported across all areas of school life. Their wellbeing can have a direct impact on their ability to perform and prioritising this is an important part of your school’s duty of care.
A whole-school approach to wellbeing ensures that all students are best supported during their school careers, and this means keeping the entire school community connected.
Effective communication, including wellbeing and behaviour notifications and reports for staff and parents, can keep all parties up to date on each individual student's personal happiness and achievements. In turn, parents and teachers can make a concerted effort to give them the support they need to have a positive experience at school and home.
Keep the community engaged
Studies suggest that when parents are involved in a child’s education, they do better on a wide range of measures in their school life. Parents want to feel involved and engaged with the school and its larger community. Ultimately, this benefits the student and the school.
Effective communication on your school’s part ensures that parents are kept up to date with the latest events, news, updates, and – more specifically – their individual child’s school life.
An engaged community is a positive community. When people feel they are working as a team to achieve a goal, they are better able to serve the student.
Your software can help you to take a holistic approach to school communication. Portals and apps, like the iSAMS suite, ensure that communication is consistent and timely for all those within the community.
Push notifications and automated alerts ensure vital communications are shared quickly and aren’t lost within larger comms. Self-service portals also provide all users with the ability to search for the information they need, at any time, for maximum flexibility. Providing a positive experience with your school communications is also important to maintaining engagement.
Prioritise teacher time management
Teachers play a key role in effective school communications. As the main point of contact for all students within your school, they are best informed on each individual student’s care and academic achievements.
However, school comms can be one of the most time-consuming elements of their role. Teachers are widely considered to have one of the most demanding roles. Around half of teachers report that their workload is unmanageable. Adding extra responsibilities around school communications is just further adding to their workload.
Despite this, teachers spend a large portion of their time communicating with parents via email or phone. This is even more prevalent in today’s schools, as contact details and means of communication become more flexible and accessible.
The most effective school communication strategies will be built with this in mind. The latest software provides a variety of provisions and methods for communicating with the school community, and automation plays a vital role in reducing the burden on your school teams.
iSAMS software, apps, and portals benefit from push notifications and automated alerts across platforms. These ensure the most important updates to a student’s care are shared quickly and easily, without input from teaching or administrative staff. By reducing the communication admin from teachers' shoulders, they can focus on providing the best learning experience for students.
iSAMS for effective school communication
iSAMS software was built with flexibility and the entire school community in mind. That’s why we created a range of apps and portals for all those involved in a student’s learning experience. Automated notifications and self-service capabilities help to maximise efficiency in school comms, while also providing a positive experience for the school community.
If you’d like to learn more about iSAMS Apps, you can watch a full demo below: