Your school has a communications strategy... but does it really have one?

In this year's free School Communications Report, 66% of British schools said they have a communications strategy.

But from talking to schools of different types and sizes, we know one undeniable truth: one school's communications strategy is another school's first draft notes. 

What is a communications strategy - and how can you make yours bulletproof?

Schools often see communications as an admin task: an annoying but necessary evil which can be squeezed into an administrator’s busy workload. However, schools with this viewpoint are missing an opportunity. 

The way a school communicates with parents, staff and students shapes its reputation - and a school's reputation is one of its most powerful tools for attracting new families.

The consequences of communicating without a strategy are clear: confused and frustrated parents, an inconsistent and disorganised school image, unimpressed stakeholders and miscommunication during emergencies or important events.

But communicating with a weak or poorly made strategy can be just as risky.

A good school communications strategy should include these five points:

• Clear goals and objectives

• Defined target audiences

• Agreed-upon roles and responsibilities

• Opportunities for feedback and questions

• Measurement and evaluation

Is your strategy missing any points? No need to worry. We've put together a nine step guide to creating a fully fledged communications strategy.

How to build a communications strategy in nine steps

Step 1: Assessment

 Assess what's working currently. You can use tools like parental surveys or engagement polls to do this. Alternatively, what has prompted positive engagement and responses from parents in the past? What has prompted negative responses?

Analyse the results and figure out what needs to be changed, and what should stay the same. 

Step 2: Definition

Set goals that you can measure. For example, improving parental engagement by 50% or doubling your attendance. If you can measure it, you can track it.

Step 3: Understanding

You need to understand how parents think and what they want. Remember, not all parents are alike. EAL parents may want the ability to translate your messages easily, while busy parents will want content that is quick, concise and to the point.

However, there are some common values held by most parents:

• Being kept informed and involved about their child
• Clear, consistent communication from the school
• Knowing what the school needs them to do and when
• Easy access and the ability to find information at any time
• Being able to support their child's learning
• A strong and consistent school brand that looks professional

Step 4: Consistency

Make sure your communications are consistent. Do they match your school's values? Do they highlight your achievements and successes? Are you handling challenges transparently, to build trust?

One important part of consistency is avoiding spam. Parents who receive the same message on many different channels, from email to text to social media to parental app, are likely to begin tuning channels out – or stop checking them all together. If your school uses multiple channels, make sure there’s a reason for that – and that parents understand where to look. The easiest way to do this is to simple pick one channel and send all communications through that, so parents only ever need to check one place.

Step 5: Accessibility
Choose accessible, easy-to-use communication channels. Can everyone use the channels you communicate on - including people who are EAL or people using assistive technology? 

Is it obvious where parents should go to find regular updates from your school? Would parents looking for timetables, messages, updates, forms or any other essential parts of school life be confused?

Step 6: Relevance

Nothing makes parents check out and stop paying attention to your communications all together than a lack of relevance. 

Make sure you're targeting parents so you only send them updates that are relevant to them and their child. Use tools to filter and segment your audience - by class, by year, by attendance, and so on.

Step 7: Preparation

When an emergency or a crisis occurs, you want your communications to be ready. Make sure you have an emergency communications plan available, with clear procedures for events like school closures and evacuations. This could include message templates for potential scenarios, so you can react quickly and professionally. 

Step 8: Implementation

Develop a plan for how your communications will be created, scheduled and sent out. Who is responsible for each of these steps? It could be multiple people, depending on the update (such as administrators for for policy updates and teachers for classroom news). Create a timeline to guide when updates will be sent. 

Step 9: Monitoring

Once your communications are being sent out regularly, you want to make sure they're doing the job you want them to do. Review them on a regular basis: use surveys to get feedback from parents, track engagement and other metrics, and analyse which of your updates are performing well and which are not. 

And when something is not performing as well as you would like, make changes - and adjust until you get the results you want.

Does a strategy make a difference?

Is it really worth putting in the time to create a communications strategy? 

That's one of the questions we sought to find the answer to in our latest School Communications Report. We didn't stop at asking schools whether or not they had a strategy - we asked about goals, challenges and how high they would rate their communication (and crucially, how high they thought parents would rate it). 

The results were interesting... and sometimes surprising.

Curious? You can download the report for free and find out what schools told us about communicating with parents in 2026.

Get the report

Want to know more about what schools and Trusts are saying about communications in 2026?

Download the School Communications Report 2026