Calendar-Based School App: Reducing both parents and educators' overwhelm

Managing family admin and schedules is an invisible and time-consuming chore that adds significantly to parents’ mental load – and school communications are a large part of this burden.

Busy parents are struggling to stay on top of school communications

85% of parents report feeling frustrated managing school communications. Information is shared via many different channels (email, websites, portals, apps, and more), making it easy to miss important details. Many parents simply give up keeping on top of it, which creates extra work for teachers and the school administration team.

We recently spoke with a principal at a Sydney-based school of 314 students who told us that their office often gets up to 50 phone calls on the morning of an excursion from parents asking what their child needs to do or bring. Many permission slips and payments are returned late, making it extremely difficult for the school to plan the excursion.

myWhānau helps with parents’ mental load

The myWhānau School Calendar Assistant is a revolutionary calendar-based school app that makes it easier for parents to stay on top of school communications. It aggregates information from school group emails, newsletters, websites and portals and automatically creates personalised calendar entries that include all the details parents need, when they need it – regardless of how the information was sent.

With myWhānau, all school communication is captured and actionable from one secure app. Parents no longer need to trawl through emails or notifications to find the information they need, as each calendar entry links to the original communication. For example, from a single email or paper note about an upcoming school excursion, myWhānau automatically creates three separate calendar entries:

1. An initial entry informing parents about the excursion and asking them to complete the consent form, and an associated deadline entry
2. Another entry asking them to complete payment, with an associated deadline entry
3. An entry on the day of the excursion telling parents what time their child needs to arrive, what to wear, and what to bring      

91% of parents feel more organised, and 87% feel less frustrated managing school communications with the myWhānau School Calendar Assistant. By supporting them to be better informed and more organised, myWhānau not only supports parents’ wellbeing but also reduces the school office’s workload supporting admin and teachers wellbeing.  

By helping parents, myWhānau lets schools reduce their administration workload

“myWhānau has made a huge difference to our school community. Our parents have said it has changed their lives by making it much easier for them to be organised.” - Sanjay Rama, Principal, Ponsonby Primary, New Zealand

Often, schools try to manage the problem that parents aren’t reading school communications by broadcasting the information across multiple channels. This approach creates more work for the school and worsen's the situation with families required to read and filter more information - so many parents give up trying to stay on top of a constant stream of school communications.

To fix this, myWhānau automatically curates a personalised view of the school communications, events and parent tasks relevant to each family. Parents feel organised and in control, and schools can stop spending time sending duplicated information across multiple communication channels.

Get in touch with Melanie Porter for a product demonstration at melanie@mywhanau.com.au or call +61 468 475 584.