A parent app only works for your school when parents use it.
Replacing emails, SMS and phone calls with one dedicated parent app for news and updates saves both cost and time for schools... but when parents aren't on the app and administrators find themselves needing to use email and SMS to reach those parents anyway, the advantage begins to get lost.
The goal for every parent app is 100 per cent uptake — but how can schools make that happen?
The first hurdle is getting the app on to parents' phones. While the actual process itself — clicking "Install" and downloading the app — is a quick one, reaching that point isn't always as easy as it sounds.
One of the biggest mistakes schools make is not telling parents about why they should download the app. For schools, the reason to have an app is clear: it makes communicating with parents quicker, easier and more streamlined. For example, Heston Community School was able to save an average of £20,000 on SMS per year with their ReachMoreParents app.
But what is the benefit for parents?
Schools sometimes leave this unsaid, which can lead parents to assume there are no benefits. However, there are many reasons for parents to download and use a parent app. In fact, when used well by a school, a parent app has significant time-savings for parents too.
"The fact that parents can give consent to trips, report on absence, read letters and communicate with us all on one app makes their lives and ours easier."
90% parent reach achieved at Heston Community School: Read the case study
Once parents have downloaded the app, many schools still find they have trouble with parental engagement. Messages go unread, reminders are ignored, and parents still prefer to make phone calls or send emails.
The Heston Community School case study reveals how they achieved 90% parent reach: by supporting parents in both the transition to the ReachMoreParents app and making sure they understood how to use it.
Parents have many different levels of comfort and familiarity with technology, which means they might find using a new app intimidating or confusing. On top of that, parents are often busy people, without the time to spend familiarising themselves with everything a parent app can do.
Parents might not know they can report absence through the app, or that they can give GDPR-compliant signatures and consent through it. They might not even realise they can message their child's teachers with the app. For schools, who typically undergo training on how to use their platform before its launch, these things seem obvious. For parents, they are not always immediately apparent.
So how can schools maximise parent engagement... and eventually achieve 100 per cent parent uptake?
Make your parent app your single source of truth: When you update parents via email, SMS and app, your parent app is seen as just one of many ways you communicate with parents, not the way. However, when emails and texts are replaced with the parent app, there is only one place to go for updates. Not only does this free up time for your administrators, it reduces confusion for parents — there is now only one place to go for updates, so they no longer need to worry about looking in the wrong place or missing an update.
Think about how you describe your app: Is your app a nice-to-have extra? Or is it the place parents need to go for all school information? The way you describe your app to parents shapes how they treat it. Treat your app as mandatory and parents will too.
Support parents in getting the most out of the app: Once parents realise how much they can do through the app, they often don't need convincing. But to get there, they have to understand how to use it. This is one of the reasons we offer support resources for both schools and parents — because sometimes parents need a little help figuring out how to find things and how to use them too.
Make app onboarding part of the enrolment process: When parents are first enrolling their child, this is the best time to get them to download your parent app. This is the point in time where they pay close attention and want to get everything right, so build parent app downloads into the process.
Use email and SMS as a back-up, not a first choice: Parents do not need the same message three times, and when they do get it three times, there's no incentive to use the parent app. However, for schools, the question of how to reach parents who do not use the app remains — and for those parents, email or SMS can be a useful back-up. Doing this manually can defeat the point of the time-saving benefits that parent apps are supposed to bring, which is why we built in a toggle to automatically send updates and messages through email or SMS only to parents who are inactive (meaning they have not downloaded the app or not logged in recently).
100 per cent parent uptake is achievable. Adoption isn't a launch task you finish and move on from. New families join every September. Treat it as part of how the school runs, not a project with an end date, and 100 per cent uptake stops being a one-time achievement and starts being the default.
How strategic are your school communications? Many schools believe they have a strategy... but do they really have one? Discover how to boost parental engagement and get your school's updates seen.