Whitecrest Primary School

What goals were you hoping to achieve when you decided that an engagement system would be a good fit for your school?

We wanted a way to contact parents in batch emails primarily to save money on paper.

Why did Whitecrest Primary School decide to use Schoolcomms to reach these goals?

We were invited to an open session at a school that used Schoolcomms and was very impressed with the system set up and ease of use.

Were there any advantages to using Schoolcomms that you hadn’t considered when originally looking?

Being able to send batch text messages. For example, we made the decision to close the school due to snow at 11am, all the children were collected by 1pm thanks to Schoolcomms.

What has parent and staff reaction been to School Gateway?

Parents like the fact that they can easily find out how much they owe for dinner money and trips and that they have not got to rely on their child remembering to hand the money in.

What challenges were you concerned about and how did you overcome them?

Our initial concern was whether parents would sign up for email letters rather than paper. As time has gone on we no longer give new parents the option, however, some of our financially challenged families do not have internet access and we make sure that they get paper copies, which the system facilitates.

What has been the impact of adopting Schoolcomms?

We have saved money not only on paper but we now have very little cash coming into school so we have cut down on G45 collections. This year we were selling pupil-designed Christmas cards at Parents’ Evening.

We gave the parents the option to pay on School Gateway and managed to sell far more than we would by relying on people to either have the cash on them or remember to send the cash in on time. This turned out to be a good money spinner for us and we will use this option on other fundraising events going forward.

Download the PDF version of Whitecrest Primary School’s journey with Schoolcomms.