Keeping in touch with your school community during lockdown

Emily Copsey - 15 May, 2020

School Operations

Category : Blog

Keeping in touch with your school community during lockdown

Arbor’s Head of Support, Emily Copsey, shares top tips for communicating with your school network during Covid-19 and partial school closures

Our schools have been sharing with us that keeping in touch with parents – particularly the most vulnerable families – is top of their minds right now. School staff are relying more than ever on parents and guardians to engage in their children’s education. Ensuring you can help parents to support their children starts with having a strong line of communication in place.

Over the last few weeks, we’ve worked with our schools to make sure they have everything they need in Arbor to keep in touch with their school community. Because Arbor’s MIS is cloud-based,  staff have up-to-the-minute data about all their students and guardians at their fingertips, so they can communicate with the right people at the right time, from one place. 

We’ve put together three top tips for engaging with parents – particularly during lockdown: 

1. Make sure it’s not all doom and gloom

2. Plan your content in advance

3. Get something in the diary

 Let’s break that down …

1. Make sure it’s not all doom and gloom

Alongside essential announcements, share some content with parents that might lift their spirits. This could be some fun weekend activities, craft projects or TV recommendations.

We’ve seen some really uplifting posts from schools on social media – like this wonderful “We miss you” video from the Knockhall Primary Staff, and free yoga sessions from Avanti Schools Trust. You could even put a short newsletter together with a weekly roundup.

We’re also delighted to share this poem sent by English Martyrs Catholic Primary School in their newsletter to their Year 6 students due to start their SATS this week. This is a great example of giving parents a way to talk about this difficult time and all the emotions surrounding it with their children.

2. Plan your content in advance

Over the last few weeks, you’ve probably been sending parents lots of updates as you react to daily changes. But as we adapt to a new way of working, it’s a good idea to plan a schedule of content you want to share with parents. Whether it’s a weekly round up of the work set for each class, or a regular prompt to parents to send in their details, creating a content calendar can help your team to prioritise their workload, and make sure information reaches parents at the right time.

Many Arbor schools are having success with planning regular communications. Baxter College send weekly key worker surveys in Arbor so they can keep track of who to expect the following week. Find out more about how Baxter College use Arbor to send automated reports here.

Remember, one channel might not work for everyone in your community. In Arbor there are lots of different options you can use to share information with parents:

• Parent Portal – Parents can log in to see information about their child. Many schools at the moment are using the portal to get parents to provide their details (e.g. medical or dietary requirements for new starters), or complete consents for new measures
• The Arbor App – In-app messages appear as push notifications on parents’ phones, so it’s a great way to get their attention remotely. Use them to send a quick prompt to parents to check their emails, or to complete consents by a certain date. Parents can reply or write in-app messages themselves, too
• Texts – A great way to get a quick answer from parents, or vice versa. Were you expecting a child of a key worker in school today but they haven’t shown up? Was the parent expecting them to be in school or has something changed? Top tip: if you’re sending texts regularly, our SMS Unlimited package can help
• Emails – This is most effective for sending critical or major updates, such as new Covid-19 requirements, or on the steps your school is taking to prepare for 1st June. Some schools are also using email to share Google form links with parents so they can let the school know when they are planning to come in – plus, you’ll be notified automatically with their responses

3. Get something in the diary

With less in-person contact with parents, it might be easy for some parents to drop off your radar. It can be useful to get a contact slot in parents’ diaries so they can plan around it. In Arbor, you can use Guardian Consultations to book one-on-one check-ins at a time that suits everyone. 

For parents who you know are not online, you’ll have to contact them in a different way. In Arbor, you can keep these parents separate in a custom group so you can plan how to reach them separately – maybe through a phone call or a physical letter. Staff can pull up parents’ phone numbers easily in Arbor, or quickly create a letter template, which will automatically populate with each parents’ details, that they can print and send out.

To find out more about communicating with parents remotely, we’re running a series of practical support webinars on parental engagement, kicking off with a session all about using the Parent Portal on Monday 18th May – sign up for free here. The Arbor Community is another great place to find advice and best practice from fellow Arbor schools – join today for free.

For full guidance on how to use Arbor to manage your school during Covid-19, check out this guide on our blog.