Reviewed by John Dabell
Since January 2012, parental engagement has been something that schools are judged on in Ofsted inspections – but with many mums, dads and carers busier than ever, communicating with them on a regular basis can prove difficult. That’s why schools are now starting to consider ways of reaching them using the technology that’s already in their pockets. Parental engagement? There’s an app for that.
Actually, there are several parental engagement apps on the market, with ParentHub one of the latest to appear – and one of the best. ParentHub is different, because it is a social enterprise run by former teachers and ambassadors of the Teach First programme, and their thinking is spot on.
They know that broadcasting generic information to parents from school HQ does nothing to engage them. To make a real difference, engagement has to be rooted and incorporated into teaching and learning. The team behind ParentHub say that this can only really happen if teachers can communicate with parents in an effective, efficient and sustainable manner. It also has to be in real time, because it’s often too late by the time it comes to a Parents’ Evening.
Weekend work saver
For teachers, this app is a dream. Class lists are ready to go on a superb teacher dashboard, making it easy to start a conversation with one parent or to get in touch with a whole cohort via its messaging feature. It’s mightily efficient, and benefits from being supported with in-app message translation for parents with EAL, as well as SMS provision for contacting parents without smartphones. There is a handy stock phrase menu, which allows you to insert general comments on behaviour, progress, reminders and praise and is a real time-saver.
The demo version proved how incredibly easy it was to get in touch with parents in an instant. Within the messaging feature you can quantify parental engagement by seeing when a message has been received, read and responded to. Having an audit trail of every interaction is so important, and fully catered here thanks to ParentHub’s detailed analytics. You’ll soon see the savings in print, paper and postage costs start to add up.
The ‘Student Insight’ feature does what it says on the tin, telling you about a student’s progress with and sending important attainment information to parents directly from SIMS – which means you don’t have to spend a disproportionate amount of time generating reports during the evenings and weekends.
Using ParentHub’s attendance feature, you can inform parents when their child has not arrived at school. It’s possible to highlight all students with unauthorised absences at once with a single click, and it also works the other way, letting parents notify the school of any upcoming absences in advance.
Bridging the engagement gap
On the horizon for ParentHub is a feature devoted to homework and a tracker facility, which will enable teachers to let parents know when tasks have been set. An added advantage of a feature like this is the ability to deliver any supporting worksheets and web content electronically.
Also in the pipeline is a School Calendar feature, which is essentially acts as a school diary. This will deliver invites to parents and allow you to plan for attendance, complete with event response options and reminders. A forthcoming ‘Parent Voice’ feature will additionally let you survey the views of parents by creating, circulating and analysing short questionnaires and surveys. Canvassing parents for their comments and suggestions will never have been easier.
Anything missing? Perhaps a feature to help with booking appointments at Parents Evenings, which I could see being widely used. Otherwise, the cost of all this seems reasonable – the in-app messaging and basic SIMS service is free for a year and then £300 per year beyond that, with additional features available on request.
ParentHub has huge potential for offering parents information about community groups or educational events, and could also be used to point them in the direction of information relating to key health and safety content such as e-safety, sexual health and drugs abuse.
It’s unfortunate that ‘parental engagement’ can be misunderstood by some schools as ‘parental interference’. Buying into an app as stunning as ParentHub could bridge gaps where they exist, and strengthen ties where school-home links are already positive. Parents don’t need to go looking for information with ParentHub, it finds them – and yes, ultimately this app can contribute towards raising students’ achievement.
