CASE STUDY: Westlands primary school

Monday, 5 September 2022 by Weduc

Weduc made our parent communications ‘unmissable’.

Westland Primary School in Kent, part of the Swale Academy Trust, wanted to reduce administration time and increase parent engagement. Reach More Parents delivered on both. We spoke to Liz Bruce, the Trust’s Lead Office Manager about her experience of using our solutions.

Liz explained that one of the biggest problems before using ReachMoreParents was the amount of time (and paper) that was taken up creating letters for trips, payments, clubs and parents' evenings: all for them never to be read and to remain crumpled at the bottom of book bags.

The same school administration teams then had to spend hours manually seeking permission replies and payments, alongside contacting parents at the start of each day to chase pupil absences.

There had to be a better solution

Initially, the school used another online communication system, but they found it lacked easy navigation and visual appeal, so parents quickly became disengaged.

"We went back out to the market and commissioned ReachMoreParents in 2018 and the impact was instant. We wanted a simple system where our communications became unmissable, and we got it!”, said Liz.

The school saw immediate results with parent engagement and thousands of hours of administration saved. This was primarily down to the accessibility of communications. For example, parents can contact the school via the app at any time of the day or night to tell the school about their child’s absence, perfect if they’ve been up all night with a sick child, and in turn, stopping lengthy phone queues at 9 am.

“We needed a simple system where communication became ‘unmissable’, and we got it.”

Westlands 2

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Similarly, parents also can let us know about contact detail changes or complete permission forms, simply and at a time that works for them, without a crumbled piece of paper in sight.

Additionally, the tailored newsfeed feature, which informs parents about a trip or an upcoming event, also provides all the information they need about the trip at the same time. Again, saving parents from having to contact the school and freeing up calls or visits for more important issues or queries.

As importantly this also gave staff significant amounts of time back to focus on what they should be focusing on, teaching, learning and pupil achievement.

The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, from both parents and teachers.

Liz said, “I have used almost every communication platform it is available for schools, ReachMoreParents is the most visually appealing and easiest to use for admin, teachers and parents alike.”

Some of the school’s favourite features include the newsfeed feature, the three-in-one posting facility and the CRV merge option.

The newsfeed feature, which filters information by year group, prompts parents to look at the app when notifications alert them. Parents readily engage with the app as they know the information they have been sent, will be relevant to their child. Meaning the school can be confident information is being received and read.

The three-in-one posting option to different social channels was also really liked. It saved duplication and time, removing the need for repeat copying and pasting.

"I have used almost every communication platform there is available for schools, ReachMoreParents is the most visually appealing and easiest to use for admin, teachers and parents alike.”

If you want to find out more about how ReachMoreParents can help your school, call us on 01509 221 349. Or send us a query here. You can also take a look at our web pages to see what we can do for primarysecondary, independent schools, and trusts.

Start reaching more parents today