Teachers2Parents Ltd. Maximising Parental Support

Teachers2Parents Ltd is a vibrant company created by two school friends who have since acquired solid backgrounds in computing, with years experience in IT consultancy. Furthermore having spent several years teaching in the UK, their first hand understanding of the demands of teaching and the capabilities of modern technology lead them to develop a web based system for delivering text messages to parents of students, by integrating data from the school Management Information and Administration Systems (MIS).

Teachers do not have the time to communicate with large numbers of parents on a regular basis. Yet parents would provide better support for their children if they were kept informed more often. For various reasons phone calls to parents can be unnecessarily time consuming and school reports are relatively infrequent. Using mobile phone text messaging teachers can inform parents far more frequently, keeping children on their toes. At the same time when their children do exceptionally well or make significant progress, parents can be notified quickly and easily. The service allows parents to be more engaged with their children’s progress in the classroom, by keeping them up to date with their little ones’ progress. The immediacy of the information means that children get praise and encouragement from parents as they come home from school, boosting their motivation for their future performance. Praise is good pedagogy too.

Texts can be sent to individuals, or groups of parents – based on teaching groups held within the school MIS. No need to fiddle downloading pricey software. Just log in to the website and at the click of the mouse, inform the parents of the whole student body that school will be closed today due to bad weather.

The web-based application also allows parents to send text messages to teachers’ inboxes by hitting the reply button. This two-way conversation reaffirms the bond between parent and teacher for the benefit of the students.

The texting service is also used by attendance officers to contact first day absences. The feedback received from the Costello Technology College pilot scheme indicates that the service improved efficiency, freeing up numerous hours for the attendance officer to be working on other attendance related tasks. Parents have also become more pro-active using the texting service to notify the school of absences in the first instance. Indeed a higher response rate to texts has been seen compared to messages left on answer phones/voicemail

Hundreds of schools across the UK already use the Teachers2Parents Ltd texting service, and more schools are adopting it every day. There is also an increasing number of schools using the facility in secondary and higher education where teachers have been finding it helpful to message students directly.

For any additional information or should you wish to run a free 1 month trial in your school, please get in touch with Teachers2Parents Ltd.

Address:
Teachers2Parents Ltd
Floor 2
16 John Austin Close
Kingston
KT2 6SU
Email: enquiry@teachers2parents.co.uk
Web: www.teachers2parents.co.uk
Tel: 07791214560 or 07963512374