Do your kids school send out letters?

[Needaweekspabreak]

Feel like we are having so much miscommunication with the school because of the way they do things. When I was at school it was a letter of upcoming things but the kids school is a newsletter that goes out Friday evening. They usually post it on Facebook Friday evening/night. To be honest I don’t always think to check facebook.

They have even started telling the kids to tell us, luckily DS told me but then I’m thinking to myself is he getting this confused as we haven’t heard anything.

Took him into school today some kids has p.e kit on and some didn’t. I tried to access the newsletter thing on Facebook to see if I had missed something and it was down.

I appreciate cutting down on paper blardy blah but surely 1 newsletter in the kids bags on Friday is more effective?

We get a newsletter and all other formal notifications through email and Dojo, other notifications and things from the teacher are just via Dojo.

Everything via email for us. Many, many emails.

My child's school sends out a weekly newsletter by email. It also has a parent app and will put important dates on that too.

My eldest's school has never done paper since they opened - c. 2008,. There is an app and everything is on that and a whatsapp for urgent notices from the school.

Paper and printing is expensive I can imagine most schools are trying to cut the spending on the least impactful items on the children.

No. Ours have gone digital to save the environment. Some stuff gets put on class charts, some via email, some via seesaw, some via sims parent, but the vast majority is on their Fb page. Stuff is missed ALL the time. My son missed out on forestry school because he didn’t bring in the right clothing etc, I missed that because the notification went out on instagram which I don’t even have. And my son was only less than 10 kids out of almost a couple hundred who was dressed up for ‘dress like your hero day’ as the only notification was a brief mention in the end of a 4 minute video the school made of ‘what we will get up to next term’, like all the parents was gonna sit through 4 minutes of mostly bollocks. Every complaint is met with ‘refer to the emailed newsletter because it always has all the listed dates and events on’ BUT IT FUCKING DOESNT!!!!

We rarely get actual paper letters now although we do have x3 different apps (and I have x3 DC at the school - all in different years). x1 app is for letters / notifications, x1 is for pictures and videos of class learning and the final app is for payments.

Wish they could find one app that does it all.

we get emails

plus there is an opt-in text alert system that is only used for emergency announcements.

to make sure I don’t miss school emails, when dc started school, I created a new email address just for school and activities. Unlike my main personal email, this one does come to my phone and pings when a message arrives. That way school emails aren’t lost among a sea of promotional offers.

Emails are so much more reliable than paper letters which can go missing, wet (if water bottles leak or bag gets left in rain or dropped in a puddle)

Eg I’ve just looked at the emailed newsletter and there’s literally nothing on there for year 3’s for the rest of this term. However my son has had to go into school in his PE kit today as they’re taking some sort of photos for the school website, there’s a school disco Friday, and an event afterschool every single day the rest of this week including forestry, a boccia tournament and a bingo night, all that needed signing up via whatever platform they were advertised on, none of which was the emailed newsletter

If you can post on MN, you can check the newsletter online!

In schools I know, paper letters are only sent to families who specifically need them. I absolutely agree with that.

If parents can't be bothered to check online, they won't bother to check the school bags anyway, complete waste of time and resources.

It's parents who have the most time to waste on social media who tend to moan the most about school emails, it's actually funny.

You should set up a class page or group.

MN as a group HATE them because most posters are apparently too cool for social media (on MN no less 😂) but in real life, they are so helpful, especially when school uses different platforms.

an app would be so useful!

I doubt it’s only on Facebook they will probably at least post it on the school website too and have an email mailing list, have you checked your email address is on it with the school office?

Letters used to get lost so it’s cheaper and uses less trees to distribute in digitally.

Our school sends it out via email but parents usually put a reminder up on the class what's app in case others haven't seen the email or forgotten and that seems to work well.

My son is at secondary school and 90 % of stuff is sent via the school app...... which I forget to check 😬

It seems like a waste of budget to print everything on paper when they can send an email.

Facebook seems a daft thing to rely on though.

I get an email which I prefer over a paper copy. I'd rather that the cost of printing was saved for something more useful.

We get a newsletter emailed every Friday and any other communication comes by email as well.

It takes less than a minute to check Facebook.
Unless paper letters are physically stapled to your child's head they will not make it home.

We have an app, where links to PDF copies of letters are shared.

We also get an email with the same information.

Every fortnight we get a newsletter that tells us what the kids have been learning about, with some photos.

It drives me crackers that they send so much info out but I suppose it is better than the alternative 😂