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The end of the school year is finally here, and it’s time to relax, refresh and start planning for the new academic year. However, it’s important not to neglect your parental communications. The question is, how do you keep parents engaged while they – and you – are on holiday? Read our latest blog to find out.
The end of the school year is finally here. If you work in education, it’s important that you use the summer to relax. Refresh yourself and start planning for the new academic year. With that in mind, it can be easy to forget about things like school communications that boost parental engagement. Just like you, parents adapt to the end of the school year. It can be easy for them to forget to keep in touch and engaged.
Yet the impact of school-parent communication can be significant for your pupils. Research shows that children with parents engaged in their learning do better in school, regardless of their economic or social situation. Therefore, if you can boost parental engagement with their children’s learning while the school is closed over the summer, you will likely see some real positive outcomes in the new school year.
The question is, how do you keep engaging with your parent community while on holiday?
We’ve previously written about the best ways to increase parental engagement in school time. In this blog, we’ve explained what you can do while taking a well earned break for the summer.
Perhaps the most important tip on this list is to make sure you prepare content in advance. So all needs to be done is to schedule it.
While the content you schedule may be relatively generic, writing content in advance is perfect for making sure your school news page and social media channels are kept active, even when you’re away. Not only does this provide parents with an excellent opportunity to keep up to date with their child’s school, it’s also your best chance of creating engagement.
After all, parents may be unlikely to visit your school’s website without a prompt during the summer holidays, but they’re highly likely to use social media with relative frequency.
You can find out more about planning comms in advance in our blog, A Guide to Planning Your School’s Communications.
It’s a good idea to start as you mean to go on, and what better way than rounding up the year’s events?
Parents love to hear about the achievements their children have accomplished. Show them the fun activities they get up to at your school. So why not get some extra value out of these engagement opportunities. You can write a roundup compiling some of the best stories from over the year?
This activity doesn’t have to be restricted to the end of the academic year, either. In fact, you can create a similar response before the Christmas or Easter breaks, too. This is also something you can do at different times of the year, for example, we wrote this Christmas roundup for one of our clients, which received a huge amount of engagement on social media.
By doing so, you can create a wonderful good news story that celebrates the fantastic work of your pupils. This will boost parental engagement, even when their children aren’t in the classroom.
Many local councils organise learning initiatives to keep children developing during the summer holidays. Examples include summer competitions in chess or maths, or more commonly, reading challenges.
Writing the content in advance makes your parent community aware of the different options available to them during the summer months through social media posts or via email. This will not only show that you care about each pupil all year round, but will also help boost parental engagement and interest in their child’s learning.
Parents won’t expect to hear from you as much as usual during the summer holidays. However, they will want to hear about preparations for the new school year.
Therefore, if you have any information for your parent community that might benefit them, don’t be afraid to get it out there.
It’s important to communicate early and often with parents. This is especially crucial for introducing new parents to the community. By keeping in touch and updating them, you’ll reassure them that they will always be kept up to date with the information they and their children need.
One of the main problems of keeping communications in house is that you don’t have capacity when the schools are closed. The best way to get around that? Outsource.
By working with an external agency such as Eduprise, you have access to a communications and marketing team the whole year round. With years of expertise and a variety of skill sets that provide all you could ever need for a successful communications strategy.
If you’re wondering how you’re going to keep in touch with your communities and boost parental engagement. Take the time off you need this summer and find out more about how Eduprise can help.
Visit our services page to find out more now.