This is a partnered guest post.
When we send the kids to school each morning we do so with the best intentions, hoping that they’ll walk through the gates in the morning, sit down in their classrooms and learn something that will stay with them for life. However, there are often a series of issues that can develop over time within a school that affect both our children and ourselves – not all of them bad it must be said – but we want to be aware of everything and anything.
Schools will often send out a letter every few weeks telling parents about upcoming events or trips, and the first time we get to read them is six weeks after the events because they’ve been scrunched up at the bottom of the kids’ bags. For that kind of reason, it’s important that parents have some method of staying in touch with the events going on at the school, and in the modern era our first port of call for all news is a website. The issue here is that a lot of schools have poor quality and infrequently updated sites that tell us nothing, except those with website design services completed by Primary Site who help to maintain and update the site.
Many schools are given template websites from the government that are nothing more than a token gesture, or one of those ideas that seems great at the time and then the people working on it leave the school and it ends up out of date and unloved. Schools are often hives of information and developments and people want to be informed – especially parents thinking about sending their children to that school in the future who want to find out about the events, trips and latest news.
More and more people source their news online today, with websites and social networks as popular – or in many cases, more popular – than traditional sources such as the television or radio news, or newspapers. From a school perspective, staying in touch with all parents can be very difficult and printing out newsletter after newsletter costs money in terms of printing costs, so having a website that is regularly updated and easy to read makes a great deal of sense from that perspective, and that of the parent.
Having arrived at work and logged onto a computer, parents would be able to visit the school site to take a look on the news section to find out what’s going on in the immediate future as well as what other classes have been upto. There may be a trip coming up soon that your child would be expected to go on as part of their work, so you can make a note of that date and how much it’s going to cost so you can ensure that they don’t miss out.
Some school websites, including those designed by Primary Site, offer children the chance to blog themselves so that they can develop their English skills as well as their computer skills. There is even the opportunity for them to access learning materials put on the site by their teachers to help with homework assignments, something that can be highly beneficial over the holidays or when they’re studying a subject you might have no knowledge of yourself.
Ugh I get letters, and emails. It’s crazy!
We mostly do everything online with my son’s school. I would hope that everyone would get onboard so they wouldn’t have to use a written and online publication.
I get daily updates from both boys teachers. They aren’t detailed but they help.
Our PTO communicates online but the school sends papers; I make sure to check my daughter’s bag every day for them because there is ALWAYS at least one!
Hoe cool that kids can blog themselves!
It’s inevitable that something always seems to fall through the cracks. I’ve always been diligent in double checking backpacks and marking the calendar right away, but sometimes it’s just not enough.
My high school and middle school use their website a lot more than the elementary school. I would love to see them catch up. I will admit they are all on the same website not an individually created page.
Right now he goes to a small enough school that he gets attention and they share feedback with me when necessary. I hope it’s always like that.
My eldest is only in preschool and I feel like I don’t get enough information from them. I always feel like I have to seek them out as opposed to them being proactive and just sending me info.
I am starting to feel this way, now that my daughter takes the bus.
EVERYTHING is done online with my daughter’s school! I kind of miss getting notes home!
I always feel like I don’t get enough info from my teens school. I feel like when they get to high school it gets even less.
It’s great that they have websites to give info.
We get tons of papers sent home in his agenda.
I get it via emails for my primary school kid. For the pre schoolers, it comes in the form of various slips of papers!!
I love this! I often get frustrated with not knowing everything that goes on during my kids days at school.
My kiddo isn’t in school yet so I’m not sure how I will get updates. I hope it’s emails!
M isn’t in school yet but I will be VERY involved when she is.
Being a teacher I understand how much easier online communication is with families. However, not all families have internet access so spending tons of money on updating websites may not be worth it if you aren’t reaching all of your parents!
If we sent our kids to school I know i’d rather have it online than in letter.
The school that I teach at does both online and letters, also robo calls.
My daughter always forgets to give me notes until it’s too late.
My son is just in preschool so they don’t have a website, but I hope his future schools do! It’s important to me to know what’s going on at his school.
I’ve found there’s a huge difference in how well individual schools utilize their websites. I’ve had excellent experiences with a couple, but there were also a few where the sites pretty much sat idle with outdated content.
My daughter’s school doesn’t use online sources as much as I would actually like. My daughter loses notes or forgets to give them to me for days so I wish they would just email because I know I would receive it instantly and see it.
I’ve to applaud my daughters school for being technological advance, we get weekly updates from the school and the teachers. They really go above and beyond to keep us in the loop. If its an emergency, we get text message, voice message and email.
Ugh! It’s so hard to keep up with all of that stuff.
I like this idea. It is a great idea to have everything in one place.
My son isn’t even attending elementary school yet, but because he will be next year, we already get the e-mail. I read most of it, but it is still easy to miss things… and if you’ve deleted the e-mail, then you are out of luck.
Thankfully, my son’s school is up to par when it comes to these kind of things.
Our schools are pretty good about sending information home. They do email newsletters, texts and other websites where we can go and look at their behavior, grades, etc.