CASE STUDIES
ParentMail a success for busy working parents at Sandford Hill Primary
Initially, some parents and carers at Sandford Hill Primary School were not convinced about moving to an online system for school communications and school money. However, today almost 100% use ParentMail and couldn’t be happier!
Sandford Hill, a large primary school with over 475 students in North Staffordshire, are delighted with how much easier ParentMail has made sending school information, collecting payments and receiving permission slip authorisations and survey results back from parents. Office Manager, Gaynor Mullin, told us “Our parents weren’t convinced at first about going digital but, with encouragement and support from office staff, we now have almost 100% of parents registered and it is working really well.”
On a recent survey sent out by the school, parents commented:
“I’m more than happy communicating with school via the ParentMail system. I love the fact that I can easily make payments and access information anytime, anywhere.”
“ParentMail is very good as I get emails to let me know if there are forms to fill in or trips to pay and I can see all things that are going on in school. I prefer ParentMail rather than paper.”
For Sandford Hill, one of the biggest benefits is Online School Payments, which has allowed them to go cashless and collect school money for a wide range of things including dinner money, trips, book fairs, Christmas performance DVD’s, tickets for the school disco, school uniform and more!
School secretary, Rebecca Morton, told us “ParentMail is brilliant and has really improved the way we communicate with parents, but the biggest benefit for me has to be online payments! We can keep a close track of who has paid for what and when, which makes it so much easier now, as it’s all recorded automatically on the system, saving hours each week.”
Another application that has proved invaluable is Online Forms Collection. Sandford Hill regularly send home permission slips, surveys and general forms for school trips, after school clubs, dinner orders, school concerts, data collection, reading workshops and to gather general parent feedback.
Rebecca said, “Responses have really improved since we’ve begun using Online Forms, because the majority of parents complete them on the App and receive a notification as soon as the form is sent. We find it a really useful way to gather permissions and feedback from our parents.”
Office Manager Gaynor uses ParentMail every day and says they are really happy with what ParentMail does for them and how it has improved engagement with parents; “We’re regularly sending emails or texts to our families and since using ParentMail, parents receive and are able to read the information we send much quicker.”
“For our working parents especially, being able to pick up messages or make a quick payment on their phone has made it so much easier, and they’re constantly giving us good feedback. We’re really pleased with ParentMail and would recommend it to any school who wants to make improvements to parental communication and going cashless!”
If you’re a UK school or college interested in using the leading online payments system or collecting forms from parents online, get in touch today and we’ll show you how easy it could be.