As we all know, maintaining good and clear communication with parents is essential for building healthy relationships within your school community. However, in the aftermath of the pandemic, parents have higher expectations than ever when it comes to keeping their children up to date at school.
Over 80% of parents believe that written communications from schools are extremely important to them during the school year.
All aspects of our lives have evolved to accommodate new technologies, from online work positions to app-based home bill management, and parents are looking for new methods to connect with schools.
It is no longer customary to send a child home with a sheet of paper with the termly newsletter. Parents want to know what their children are doing every day, how they are performing, and any impending news and events with the press of a button.
Does your school currently provide a parent portal? Here are some of the main reasons why you should include an online service for parents.
That is why many schools have decided to provide a separate online parent portal, parent app, or both. These tools are an excellent method for teachers and administrative staff to stay in touch with the school's parent community while also managing their time effectively.
Should you consider an online parent portal and app?
While these two tools can provide a comparable set of functions, it's important to understand what they are, why you need them, and how they differ in use scenarios.
Parent portals are websites specialized for communicating with parents that require a secure login. You can integrate your cloud-based MIS with the portal to host specific vital data or photos, as well as publish any key bulletins or forthcoming events.
You can also accept safe online payments for school tuition, allowing parents to pay using a variety of payment methods. Portals can be safely accessed anywhere through a parent's usual web browser or via their smartphone and are customized to your school.
The key distinction between these two technologies is that applications give all information through a bespoke app rather than the browser. Apps may have more limited capabilities since they generally prioritize simplifying the user experience above providing the most information. Typically, parents would utilize this to rapidly access daily information.
Benefits of a Parent App
The majority of schools nowadays will use email as their primary mode of communication with parents. While this is an excellent approach to disseminating knowledge in large numbers, it may not match the expectations of today's parents.
What should parents do if they are actively seeking information that is not in their inbox? Parent portals and apps are the appropriate answer for parents who are actively engaged.
Communication
While parent portals provide email and SMS communications for direct interaction with parents, they can also share bulletins or push notifications for critical or timely information when integrated with a parent app.
Finally, providing a bespoke parent communication platform means that you retain the highest number of outbound touch points with your parent community.
However, your portal and app do more than just permit one-way communication. These tools allow parents to access specific information, such as schedules, reports, calendars, reward or punishment information, and more.
This decreases the number of repeated questions from parents, increasing the productivity of your administrative team while also ensuring that parents' concerns are addressed.
The Parent Portal and iParent App provide email, SMS, and push notifications to schools. Parents can also access their child's school contact information, as well as all important school-related information, at any time that is convenient for them.
Fee payments are quick and convenient.
In our daily lives, most of us use applications or online portals to manage our bank accounts or make payments. In fact, your parents may now anticipate that functionality.
Connect your parent portal to a secure payment gateway. It is critical to present your parents with an easy manner to pay their fees and minimize any friction in the process. Your parent site can hold invoices, giving parents complete transparency over their previous payments and allowing them to pay whenever it is convenient for them.
Your parent site should be their preferred method of making cashless payments for tuition, invoicing, and extracurricular activities. Payments seamlessly interact with both your parents' and admissions portals, enabling optimal efficiency for your finance departments and maximum ease for your parents.
Efficiency
As previously stated, parents' expectations of their children's schools have escalated since the outbreak. Communication was crucial throughout the lockdown periods, and as a result, many parents had more access to teachers and administrators. Unfortunately, this is not always sustainable for your employees.
Taking the time to integrate and distribute a parent portal and app decreases the amount of tiny, repetitive, but time-consuming chores that your administrative and instructional personnel must do daily.
It is estimated that instructors receive 20 emails every day. Teachers' time is incredibly valuable, and it is critical that they can devote it to teaching rather than replying to emails and texts.
Improve school performance by managing staff workload with the Parent Portal and iParent App. These technologies, which are integrated with your MIS, optimize the data that your school uses daily and make essential information available to your school community.
Conclusion:
Modern educational institutions should adopt parent portals together with apps to boost their communication methods and operational efficiency. The online tools create a secure platform that allows parents to obtain real-time information about their child’s academic journey and upcoming events, thus eliminating regular inquiries.
School communication efficiency improves through integrated features in which email, SMS, and push notifications ensure prompt delivery of valuable information.
Schools that simplify payment options for tuition fees together with fees increase both parent satisfaction and streamline administrative processes. The growing expectations from parents can be fulfilled through robust online communication solutions that simultaneously reduce teacher and staff administrative load.
Parent portals and mobile applications function as essential instruments to build open academic relationships between educational institutions and households, leading to student achievement and school results.
