The Herald Scotland websitetoday reports that Loretto School in Scotland is the first school in the UK to launch an iPhone application for parents to keep up with its activities and events.
The app, which will be available next week, is promoted as “making it easy for parents and the whole school community to keep up-to-date with the school’s ever changing activities, timetables and news.”
So is this likely to be the first app of many in the UK’s education sector? mtm strongly believe the answer to this is a fairly emphatic ’yes’. In our parental research, which includes bespoke online satisfaction surveys, telephone interviews with parents, non-buyers and future joiners, and focus groups with parents, we consistently find that communication between the school and its parents is a significant priority.
mtmconsulting helps schools with communications and e-marketing strategies
This appears to be symptomatic of shifting lifestyles in general, not just in education. With 24 hour news, live website feeds and mobile communications now the norm for most of us, parents of course want swift and easy access to up-to-the-minute information about their child’s school life. Indeed, we feel that this will be an increasingly crucial responsibility for schools’ marketing and communications staff. Twitter, Facebook, websites, apps, email and SMS contact are, more and more, replacing the conventional notes to parents stuffed into the bottom of pupils’ bags.
For many schools, this move towards e-marketing is a daunting prospect. This should not be the case. mtmconsulting has dedicated web-design services for schools and in-house e-marketing expertise to support schools’ communications and marketing teams. If you would like to have a discussion about how we may be able to help your school enhance parental communications, please contact mtm.
