Croft Primary School increase parental engagement with SchoolPing

Introduction

Croft Primary School is situated in the heart of the Croft village in Warrington. They are attended by 210 pupils aged between 3 and 11 years old.

The school were looking for a more flexible communication tool that allowed them to communicate with their parents more effectively. They wanted to move on from an outdated and costly texting service to a more modern and user-friendly communication solution.

Already a New Era customer, they approached us, to find out more about our complete school communication app. After seeing how much money and time we could save them each year, they immediately made the decision to start using SchoolPing.

No message limitations or per-message costs!

Croft Primary had previously been using a texting service to communicate with their parents. Being charged per text message and cramming messages into a set number of characters meant that there were limitations to the amount they could engage with their parents.

SchoolPing allowed them to pay an annual subscription which comes with unlimited messages and characters as well as the ability to share photos, videos, newsletters and more. This not only eradicated their high texting costs but also removed the need for printed communications within the school.

Improved parental engagement and flexibility

They liked the flexibility of the SchoolPing system, and found that it helped to improve communications with parents and carers.

Karen Hewertson: ”We chose SchoolPing as it offered more flexibility than our previous texting service.”

Make parents evening administration disappear…

Croft reported that teachers and admin staff found it both difficult and time consuming to co-ordinate their parents’ evening appointments. They needed a solution which removed the teachers’ involvement as well as cutting down the admin staff’s workload.

Parents now book their own time slot via the app. With real-time information, parents only see the slots available and they can move appointments where necessary. No more printed slips, no more re-scheduling and juggling of appointments – just a seamless appointment booking process. It also has the added benefit of going straight into their calendar.

SchoolPing parents’ evening feature comes as standard and eradicates the administration usually associated with twice yearly parents evening. So much so that our customers save an average of 119 hours every year on parents evening and permission slips alone.

Karen Hewertson: ”We found the parents’ evening system very easy to use. It has helped remove the teachers involvement in coordinating the appointments.”

Share more of the good news with the school community

Saving time and money wasn’t the only deciding factor for Croft Primary. They wanted to be more engaged with parents and become more integrated within the school community.

Using SchoolPing, Croft Primary have found that the system allows them to improve communication links between the school and parents/carers’. It has enabled them to share more of the positive news and share experiences that they were unable to do previously.
See which parents are engaging with you.

The detailed analytics provide a vital look into which parents are reading and receiving messages. Croft have utilised our forms feature to send out parent surveys and the analytics helps them determine who has responded. It also allows for clever re-targeting for those unengaged parents.

Karen Hewertson: ”SchoolPing is an excellent system and has helped improve communication with parents’ and carers, giving us the ability to share school life and experiences.”

Summary

Croft Primary have not only seen their communication with parents become more effective, but it has also given them more freedom and flexibility with what they send out and when.

They have saved both time and money using SchoolPing as well as benefitting from a more streamlined parent’ evening booking process.