The older of my blog readers will recognise this as a song title from Spandau Ballet. During the course of the summer I have the chance to catch up on all those domestic tasks which I should have done earlier in the year but never quite got round to. This often involves me having to ring places like the bank, the garage, the dentist, a shop or two etc. I often find this a frustrating task with it being so difficult at times to talk to someone. My bank is the worst at this, in one recent call I spent nearly twenty minutes being passed from one automatic option to another and at no stage was it possible to speak to another human being.
This got me thinking about communications with schools. I feel that my own school is pretty good at communicating and in our last parental survey we got a very positive rating in this respect. However, I do feel that schools should make this area a priority. Unlike many other organisations we are only open Monday to Friday during office hours so the majority of people trying to contact us are doing so in their work time and thus inevitably they can find it so frustrating if they are unable to get the answer they want.
A couple of years ago I went to a seminar by a marketing expert who was explaining to schools’ marketing people his own experience of independent schools. He gave a powerful exposition of the frustrations he faced in getting in touch with his child’s school. He said that this was the biggest weakness he had found in education. He explained that all schools talk of the importance of the triangle between parents, child and school yet it was almost impossible in his case to contact the School.
I do believe that our school is better than most in this respect. On looking at a number of school websites I could find very few that do as we do and publish all the email addresses of every member of staff so that people can contact us. Many schools just have the one incoming email address and it can take ages to reach the person they want to contact, some make it impossible to contact individual staff altogether. Of course, there need to be protocols. Teachers are often teaching every period during the course of the day and so staff cannot respond to an email by return. I do sometimes have to remind parents of this and suggest to them that they would prefer the teachers to be concentrating on the class in front of them rather than responding to the email sent twenty minutes earlier.
I am sure that social media can play an important part in our communicating as a school. We now have an ever-increasing number of staff using Twitter to communicate. Thus, if a fixture is cancelled now we will be able to tweet news of this out quickly rather than asking every parent to ring the one answerphone message. I hope that in the future we can explore text-messaging as well via our new database. Similarly we have used a Posterious blog to relate what is happening on a school trip. Our Junior School provided video reports on each days’ activities on a residential trip. Photos of activities can be easily sent ‘as live’ by Twitter. The possibilities are endless. Another part of our strategy in this area is to use blogs to communicate more informally and to try to give the thinking behind what we are doing in some areas or to stimulate discussion and debate.
Clearly there are times when we get it wrong. As headmaster I am the natural point of call for anyone wanting to complain when things have gone wrong. At times we just have to apologise and learn the lesson but I try to set an example myself and respond to all my incoming mail within the same working day whenever possible. I am sure that we can improve even further in these respects and will be looking at our customer service in this respect during the course of this year.
In conclusion, I believe that effective communication should lie at the heart of our relationships with parents and welcome any comments on this post particularly if they contain good ideas for the future!
-
Welcome
I am Headmaster at Nottingham High School, an independent school for boys aged 4- 18. I am very keen to explore the potential of new technologies in education. I hope that this blog will become another useful method of communication with those in our school community and beyond.
Links
-
Recent Posts
Recent Comments
Archives
- April 2013
- February 2013
- December 2012
- November 2012
- October 2012
- September 2012
- August 2012
- July 2012
- June 2012
- May 2012
- April 2012
- February 2012
- January 2012
- December 2011
- November 2011
- October 2011
- September 2011
- July 2011
- June 2011
- April 2011
- March 2011
- January 2011
- November 2010
- October 2010
- September 2010
- August 2010
- June 2010
- May 2010
- April 2010
- March 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
Categories
-
-
Meta
I can empathize fully with your comments about the frustrations involved when contacting banks. I recently changed mine after 27 years of loyalty for this reason. My new provider has that special ingredient so important in communications ‘the human touch’ with the added bonus that their Twitter stream is excellent.
I manage the communications for one of the UK’s largest schools with a wide geographical and cultural demographic. For the last five years I have tried to make it as easy as possible for our parents to get in touch with staff – both teaching and non-teaching – through our website and Weekly Bulletins. We educate and care for our parents most valuable possession and the ability to reach specific staff when they have concerns, or just want to get in touch – by email or telephone – is crucial. As you say so many schools ‘protect’ their staff behind one email address or telephone number and I cannot understand why.
Our most successful form of communication to parents (and pupils) has been through our Flickr stream: over 46,000 visits in 10 months. These casual images taken during the week of events large and small have ensured our parents are included visually in their son’s school. Youtube was also popular with 11,000 hits, so much so that we are about to introduce own TV platform for the boys to use, alongside staff and professional filmmakers, to showcase their work.
I am passionate about communication and ensuring that our school stays ahead of the game in communicating to parents and future parents. The last person to comment should not be disheartened by the lack of response to any form of communication they introduce. People engage in so many different ways, it’s a case of ensuring that you reach your audience in the way they would like to receive your information. The fact that schools are beginning to introduce social media platforms to communicate means they will stay relevant to our Y and Z Generations in the future. I too remember Spandau Ballet (which indicates which generation I belong to) and find the new world of digital communication and the opportunities it brings an exciting place to be!
Sally-Anne Rogers
The Manchester Grammar School
As a parent of a boy at the High School may I congratulate you on the email system you have described – one Sunday afternoon I found that I needed to contact my son’s tutor and was able to easily locate his email address. I wrote the email thinking that it would be received at some point on Monday however I was very impressed to receive a reply later that day and the issue was resolved by Monday lunchtime.
In stark contrast I have tried on various occasions to contact two local state secondary schools through a central email address to organise placements for my Primary PGCE course. I have not had any replies despite repeated attempts. I understand that teachers are incredibly busy but parents need to feel that they can contact someone if they need to and I know that I can easily make contact with the High School – thank you!
Like your school we too try hard to have an open line of communication between parents and I take pride in responding to all parental communication the same day.
We use email, our blog and text messaging effectively but have struggled with Twitter and our iPhone app. I’m not sure why our app and Twitter haven’t attracted more users – rightly or wrongly I assumed we were a bit too ahead of the times, I think this sometimes can be a problem with new tech.
Your idea of publishing staff email addresses is inspired and is an idea I’d like to take to my new school in January. From experience, I know some staff may resist such a change but as you say schools should be no different from other organisations and the better the communication the better the outcomes for all.
Thank you for such a thought provoking post.