Phase: Primary
Local Authority: Coventry
What goals were you hoping to achieve when you decided that an engagement system would be a good fit for your school?
Our overall aim was to go completely cashless – our initial focus was dinner money and trips.
After taking up the system we opened a before and after school club and used the system to manage all bookings for these clubs, making parents self-sufficient.
We also expanded to include residential trips and paid nursery places and now ask parents to pay for everything online.
Why did John Shelton Community Primary decide to use Schoolcomms to reach these goals?
The amount of footfall in the office to pay for things was making it unnecessarily busy in the morning and we wanted to make parents more self sufficient and have less onus on admin staff.
We stopped issuing receipts as it was taking up too much time and parents wanted a way to track their payments. This system gave us something concrete to track things on.
We asked other schools to see what people used and compared prices and Schoolcomms was the one we chose to adopt.
Were there any advantages to using Schoolcomms that you hadn’t considered when originally looking?
The amount of things we could use it for and how much easier it would make everything.
All payments are now online, even though our initial the focus was only dinner money and trips. We also use it for all our communications with parents, both text and email.
What challenges were you concerned about and how did you overcome them?
Everyone adapting to a new system – parents and staff alike as it was something new to learn. We liase with Scoolcomms if there is an issue we cannot resolve or don’t understand.
Since opening the after-school club the manager of that service had some training via Schoolcomms in how to set this up and make it run in a way that works for us.
What has been the impact of adopting Schoolcomms?
Less cash handling. Reduced our cash collection from weekly to fortnightly and hope to reduce down further. Parents are able to book before and after school clubs themselves online, so they manage their own bookings and no admin time is required.
Download the PDF version of John Shelton Community Primary School’s journey with Schoolcomms.
