Independent Review of mySchoolApp, by John Dabell

  • Independent Review of mySchoolApp, by John Dabell
  • Independent Review of mySchoolApp, by John Dabell
  • Independent Review of mySchoolApp, by John Dabell
  • Independent Review of mySchoolApp, by John Dabell
  • Independent Review of mySchoolApp, by John Dabell
  • Independent Review of mySchoolApp, by John Dabell
  • Independent Review of mySchoolApp, by John Dabell
  • Independent Review of mySchoolApp, by John Dabell
  • Independent Review of mySchoolApp, by John Dabell
  • Independent Review of mySchoolApp, by John Dabell

Imagine the scene: you are stuck in heavy traffic with a coach load of Year 7s, having spent the day at Alton Towers. It’s raining cats and dogs and the motorway is closed because there’s an escaped Rhea bird doing 40 mph down the middle lane. How will you let all those parents know? Well, what you could do is send them a push notification via your smartphone – if you have a clever school app like mySchoolApp, that is. This simple to use innovation makes communication with parents what it should be: fast, accurate and reliable. mySchoolApp is one of many apps on the market dedicated to helping schools enhance communication with parents by providing the very latest information wherever they might be. Yes, it allows mums and dads to de-clutter and reclaim their cork boards – but from a school perspective there are lots of other reasons why something like this makes perfect sense, and mySchoolApp includes a lot for the £250 it charges a year. So what do you get? Importantly, you buy into the app but parents can download it for free - I don’t think you would get many takers otherwise. Your school identity is crucial, so every opportunity to market it is essential; I would expect an app provider to take branding seriously and mySchool App does, as it will use your school colours and logo (if you want a presence in the app store with a branded app tile then you can do this, but it will cost more).

Time and place

One of the most important features of a school app is the calendar. With this app, you can instantly access and update yours. There is direct communication via secure messaging with the school office and you can manage absence notifications and absence requests securely as well.

Not all messages need to go to everyone, which is why it is good to know that mySchoolApp allows you to send groupspecific notifications so that only parents with children in particular school year groups get to find out what is important to them. This goes for clubs and teams too, whereby parents can subscribe to those groups that are relevant to their child. Thankfully there is a default ‘all users’ option though, to ensure news gets out to everyone about bad weather and school closures.

If you want to include details about events such as timings, travel arrangements and links to Google maps then you can. If you want to share information via social media then one push and it’s done. What about including school policies? These can be included as well. You can also add your school prospectus for parents to view. What schools want to do is showcase their good work and let stakeholders see what’s happening, which is why the Gallery feature is very welcome as you can easily create albums and add pictures with captions. A translation option has just been added as well, which means mySchoolApp can support over 70 different languages. For parents with children in more than one school, multiple log-ins are possible.

Easy does it

If you are worried about whether you need any specialist skills to make the magic work then don’t as creating and editing content is really very easy. Information can be entered into the app through a user-friendly webbased mSA Portal, which - very importantly - is fully secure and has different permission levels to it. Schools just need to register the members of staff who are authorised to manage information uploads and you are ready to rock and roll. Technical support is available and there is also online troubleshooting with the ubiquitous FAQs area.

The app home page is a joy because it is automatically configured and so presents parents with the nearest upcoming events and the latest news item on one page. Click on one of these and you are in. As you update your news feed, then the story on the home page will change, which makes a world of difference as it sends out a message that your school is a living, breathing entity. Some apps and websites don’t get updated often enough; that’s just bad PR, because it makes your school look asleep.

Future prospects

In terms of what’s on the horizon, mySchoolApp plans on making things even better to include the ability to make electronic payments, track pupil progress, and monitor attendance stats. A Windows version isn’t currently available but it works on smartphones and tablets that are running Apple iOS or Android. I’ve always been surprised at the number of schools that don’t have a school app yet because they are fast becoming the norm.

They are simple channels of communication for everyone involved in school life, with parents kept securely and conveniently in the loop. Not just that but you send out a very powerful message that your school has its finger on the technological pulse – an app has got to be better than voicemail, text or email not to mention lost notes and pupil excuses along the line of ‘the dog ate it Miss’.

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