How do schools tell you about their clubs?

[Cvoss]

Hi there,

I'm in my final year of a computer science degree (about 20 years too late...), and thought I'd try to build something actually useful for my final project (which is like the final thesis in most other degrees). My kids have gone to a few different schools so far, as we've moved house, and my dd has started secondary, and for all of them I've been a little frustrated with how little information they shared about school clubs. I then looked up a few dozen other schools, and the problem appears to be the same across the board - at best a school will share a spreadsheet with the clubs listed, but some only post in newsletters or even rely on word of mouth.

I decided to interview a few of the admin staff at a few schools, and it became clear that even though schools are expected to provide after school clubs to enrich their curriculum, they receive little to no funding to manage them.

I'd like to build an app to help with that, something very simple to handle how the information is shared, but to do this well, it would be really helpful to hear from as many parents as possible about what information you would like to receive... So I've set up a simple survey - it literally takes a couple of minutes to fill in, and asks no personal questions. It is completely anonymous.

So if any of you are willing to do this, I would greatly appreciate it.

The survey is at:
chustvedt.survey.fm/how-schools-share-information-about-clubs

[horseymum]

Our high school shares its parents evening booking system with the primary school s to use for booking spaces on clubs. Works fine. At high school, the kids just decide which they want to turn up to, don't need parent permission.

[Cvoss]

That's great :-)

It is similar at my dd secondary as well, though, they have a lack of access to info there (They share names of clubs, when and where, and who leads them, but little else, which makes it hard for a shy kid to know if they should join). So she can go to what she wants - but she doesn't necessarily know much about the clubs.

My hope is to create something relatively simple, and free, that schools can use to share information much more effectively, and which allows them to describe clubs and present them with all the information kids and parents might need (and at the same time save schools time, as they won't have to answer questions over and over again about the same thing). But this will be much better if I hear from more parents about exactly what info they and kids find important (hence the survey - which is generally answered in about 1-2minutes, so does not take up time or effort to do - I promise!! :-)

[Muchtoomuchtodo]

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