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Choosing a Tutor in Preparation for Exams

Exam time can be a stressful period for everyone involved. If your child needs extra help in a particular subject, of course, you may be thinking of hiring a tutor to get them through or improve their grades. This is a good idea but choosing the right person can also...

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Once children start school, parents have to consider the prospect of homework. While this can be an exciting time as your child begins to learn new things, it can also be pretty challenging. Children can be enthusiastic or resistant to homework depending on their...

School Communication Barriers

As a company that helps schools communicate better in this brilliant technological age, working to bring down barriers is one thing that we’re particularly focused on at Parentapps. Most teachers and heads of school understand that good communication and involvement...

Parent’s Evening: Questions to Ask Teachers

One of the most important times that mums and dads get to meet teachers is during a parent’s evening. While these can be useful to understand how your child is doing in specific subjects and whether there are any problems, they can be quite hectic. Going in prepared...

Help with Pupil Premium

Since the launch of the Universal Infant Free School Meal Policy, schools have struggled to get parents to register for Pupil Premium because there is no longer the same incentive for parents to do so. Whilst the increase in children receiving school meals is fantastic…

How Surveys Can Help Improve Parental Engagement

The Surveys feature of Parentapps Connect, provides schools and nurseries with an easy way to find out what is and isn’t working when it comes to parental engagement. And, because you can choose whether to send them to the whole school, particular year groups, or…

How your school’s app can help with phonics

Now that Spring has begun, it will soon be time to start preparing your pupils for the Phonics Key Stage 1 Screening Check. Many children could benefit from having extra phonics help at home. And, many parents would be more than happy to work with their children in…

How an app can help improve safeguarding

Safeguarding is one of the biggest areas of concern for any nursery or school today. And, as parental engagement specialists, it is something that we take into great consideration when building our communication apps. A secure parental communication app can help put…

The Benefits of Having a Nursery App

If you want to build better engagement and keep your current parents up to date with the latest developments, you should consider a dedicated communication app for your nursery.
Increasingly, organisations are choosing to create their own apps to complement their…

Why Should Your School Have a Dedicated App?

Apps are everywhere. Collectively we download billions of them to our mobile phones and tablets each year. We do our weekly food shops, book flights and bank all from apps on our mobile devices.
But is a dedicated app suitable for your school? Can it deliver better…

Finding better ways to communicate between staff, pupils and parents has become a key area for most schools. The perennial question has always been how heads and managers increase engagement while at the same time reduce those important admin costs.

With the development of modern technology, mobile apps for schools are becoming increasingly popular. In the past, schools would need to spend a sizeable amount of their budget to hire a developer and work with them to produce anything like this.

Today, it’s a lot easier and certainly a lot cheaper. There are numerous benefits from creating a dedicated mobile app for your school:

It is easy to do

First, developing your own app is very simple. You choose the functions that you want to include, add your school’s branding and you are almost ready to go. For parents, an app provides an easy way to stay in touch with school activities – they can check what their child is up to, get notifications for future events or advice about potential problems and access a lot more information at the touch of a button than they ever could before.

It reduces admin

Contacting parent’s and pupils always used to be a drain on admin resources. Whether that was picking up the phone and calling individual parents or creating mailshots to inform them of future activities, admin staff would largely have to carry most of that burden. Because a school mobile app has a much quicker and automated reach, it can take just one person to send out an important message or update the system for everyone.

It increases engagement

Because it sends messages and information out to pupils and parents via their smart devices, this generally means people are more likely to engage. Even with websites, users actively have to visit and log onto a site to browse for the information they want. With mobile technology, all this is done automatically. You can create block notifications of various vital information or send individual messages, depending on the design of your app and your school’s needs.

It widens what you can communicate

Because the overall cost is lower, having a school mobile app has also encouraged many heads to widen the scope of their communication. That again leads to better engagement and makes parents feel a bigger part of the school community. You can add value with school documentation or even upload images for events such as sports days. During the summer months, you can send notifications to parents to remind them when term starts or invite them to the school play at Christmas. The possibilities are practically endless.

All this can be achieved in real time. You send a message out to parents and you can be confident that they have all received it at the same time. That also leaves your admin staff with extra time to do more important things.

At Parent Apps, our mobile apps for schools are a fantastic way to create a better level of communication with parents and pupils. You can create apps that work across all devices including iPhones and android phones, get a tailored solution for your needs and it’s all extremely affordable. If you want to learn how a mobile app for your school can change the way you operate, contact the team at Parent Apps today for a free demonstration.