IT in Education: Parent Relations

An average sized school has about 1500 students, and about 2500 parents. To maintain cordial relations with each individual over 15 years (Nursery to Std 12) is an important task for a school Regular communication with so many individuals is not be possible without the use of IT.

Use of IT is done in several ways by a school to get the information across to the parent. Modern schools have emails and computers for each teacher. The parents are free to write to teachers and teachers are free to reply back. Parents can even write to Principal and Management. Some schools ensure a 2 working day response time to all emails. Several schools send weekly updates of their child’s progress over email, sometimes with photos.

Facebook is becoming a boon for school managements worldwide. The school posts their activities and updates on their own Facebook page. Parents see their children’s photos on such pages almost instantaneously. At times these updates are so fast that before the child returns home from the school, parents would have seen the photo of the activity they have done at the school. More so the parents like and comment on the update. This gives a feedback to school on what activities were liked and what were disliked.

Maintaining an up to date website is one of the best investment for marketing which the school can do for providing information to new and prospective parents. Printing a prospectus and charging for it is an outdated concept. Today’s school gets parents inquiries from across the world and before shifting to a particular city parents search for schools online. Hence using IT schools can market themselves across the world.

An important development which has helped school reducing communication time and cost is the WhatsApp. Most parents who can afford quality education for the child have smart phones. These parents are added on a “Broadcast” list and school can send messages to parents faster and cheaper. This kind of system is usually used in case of emergencies like closure of school due to rains, riots or any unforeseen circumstances. Also many parents use this medium to get small information they need from the school. The best part is that its one way communication so parents if they respond to messages send by school, only the school gets them, other parents are not aware.

WhatsApp groups also help parents. They are usually created by mothers themselves of particular class are helping to share information especially in younger classes where the students are not talking to each other from home. They are two way communication so if one mother writes something, others can read it.

All these technologies increase parent’s involvement in child’s education and also assures to the parents that the school is taking right care of the child.