Parents are busier than ever managing the work, school and family juggle. Our hectic modern lifestyles mean keeping families informed about what’s happening at school – and particularly ensuring they know when something’s required of them – is an ongoing challenge.

While the school newsletter occasionally going unread may not be a big deal, chasing missed permission slips and regular or ad hoc payments creates extra work for both classroom teachers and the school office. Meanwhile, stressed and frustrated parents who are struggling to stay on top of school communications will be in regular contact, asking for information they’ve already been sent.

Whether they’re double-checking the details of an upcoming excursion or camp, reaching out because they missed parent-teacher interviews, or asking for an important email to be resent, this parental noise takes school staff away from the tasks they should be focused on.  

Uninformed parents create more work for schools

Many parents of school-age children feel overwhelmed by the number of school communications they receive – particularly if they have children attending different schools.

Most schools use many channels to communicate with families, which means parents may be swapping between multiple email accounts, websites, portals and apps to get a complete picture of what’s happening. Managing school communications is usually a manual and time-consuming task for families, and the process can easily break down if a to-do is missed or not captured when it’s first read.

The issue for schools isn’t necessarily that parents aren’t reading school communications – it’s that they need to read, filter and capture tasks and events somewhere so they can remember and revisit them. 1 in 3 parents tap a few words into their phone calendars, 20% write them into a diary or notebook, and 12% of parents don’t record their school to-dos at all.

My Family Hand supports parents to manage school communications more effectively

The My Family Hand's School Calendar Assistant is a ground-breaking app that makes it easy for parents to stay on top of school communications. It’s the only calendar-based app that aggregates information from school emails, newsletters, websites and portals and automatically creates personalised calendar entries that include all the details parents need – regardless of how the communication was sent.  

School parent tasks like completing permission slips or registering for events are diarised with automatic deadlines and reminders, and parents can mark these tasks as complete once actioned. An end-of-day notification summarises all new communications and the following day’s tasks and events. 

Each family’s calendar entries are personalised by class (primary), or year (secondary) and can be by co-curricular activities too. Teachers can add information about special materials or uniforms required, giving them confidence that students will arrive to class prepared.

My Family Hand makes a tangible difference to parents’ mental load, with 93% of users feeling more organised and 87% less frustrated managing school communications and 87% more productive at work.

Find out more contact Melanie Porter for a product demonstration at melanie@myfamilyhand.com.au or call +61 468 475 584.