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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

AIBU to think it's common to have online communication with parents

11 replies

Eleanor1984 · 03/04/2023 20:08

The school my DD attends doesn't use any form of online communication to tell parents what the children have been doing in class. They have a Facebook page with special events etc on but no day to day stuff.
Is this unusual? When I speak with other people they talk about things like seesaw or class dojo through which they get regular updates from class.
I am just wondering if it is the minority that have it or not

OP posts:
MajorCarolDanvers · 03/04/2023 20:09

We get sent an online newsletter twice a term.

That's it.

EnglishRose1320 · 03/04/2023 20:11

What age children are you talking about? Nursery and early years, quite common to use some form of online communication/online photo sharing, but frequency varies massively from school to school.

Older than early years and I don't think it's as common if used at all. Certainly wasn't at my children's school or ones I worked at.

Hummusanddipdip · 03/04/2023 20:12

School I work at use tapestry, but only in EYFS, it's phased out in year 1.

We have a Facebook page and twitter which are updated infrequently/when we have events or school trips. However we do have a weekly flipgrid newsletter type thing that the head sends out every Friday, this is emailed to parents and shared to social media. I have friends in other schools and this is pretty typical of primary in our area.

Skyeheather · 03/04/2023 20:12

We have Seesaw which the teacher uses to show parents what's going on in class (how often it's used depends on the class teacher) School also has FB page, Twitter page and school app.

L3ThirtySeven · 03/04/2023 20:12

We have a monthly newsletter. They did go to a school that had some sort of parent website to check on homework and so on, but I never bothered with it. Anything important is put in their book bag as a note and I or DH unpack their book bags every evening.

Mumma · 03/04/2023 20:14

The nursery we are looking at dont and specifically said this is because they want their staff to be engaging with the kids and not being a device taking photos etc.

LittleLegsKeepGoing · 03/04/2023 20:17

We have Class Dojo, Google Classroom, a specific school app and communication is still fucking appalling so we rely on the whats app group that has a teacher and TA as parents in there.

I wish they'd pick a channel and just use it properly!

HockeyJock · 03/04/2023 20:22

Ours don't do anything like that. We have a weekly newsletter and a termly class curriculum summary emailed to us (paper copies available).

There is a school FB page but it is used for emergency messages like when there's a snow day, or to remind re inset day etc, not for updates or photos.

My best friend's DC school only do an ad hoc newsletter but I think used Tapestry for EYFS.

In fairness, I personally think schools that are concentrating on the fact to face care and teaching of children probably don't have time for taking lots of pictures then uploading and sharing them with annotation. Our school has class staff on the door at drop off and pick up, always happy to have a word and also regular parents' consultations and replies to mails.

There's a school near us that puts photos on social media all day every day, millions of them. I cannot understand what the point of it is, except to market themselves and show off about what they're doing (the vast majority of which other schools are too, without shouting about it). I personally would resent my children being photographed all the time, Interrupted while working/playing and question what the staff are doing with them if they're behind a camera all the time!

I think schools needs to strike a balance between ensuring parents have information and insight into what their children are doing so they can support learning etc, and not getting caught up in promoting themselves/the activities to the extent that they're not actually in the room with the kids.

Eleanor1984 · 05/04/2023 08:09

Thank you everyone sounds like it isn't as unusual as I thought not to have anything. Must just be that my friends children (different schools) all seem to have something.

OP posts:
NeverDropYourMooncup · 05/04/2023 08:23

Every digital package needs someone to manage it, to set it up, to troubleshoot, to support and train others in it, to make sure it works with essential programs, to deal with updates and logins and security, to make sure it's on the information asset register, to check it meets the security requirements, to make sure that no prohibited people get access to children or staff details, to make sure it's not a way in which the school can be hacked/ransomware installed.

Oh, and somebody needs to pay for it.

Some schools have the money, staff and time for all that, some don't.

KrisAkabusi · 05/04/2023 08:32

Monthly school newsletter sent via email.
The kids use seesaw for their homework, but it's not used by parents at all.

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