Admin and Comms, please help me manage my expectations

[PensionPuzzle]

DD1 joined 'nursery' class (preschool) at our first choice, catchment school in Jan.

I'm becoming increasingly frustrated with the admin and comms side of things but this is balanced by the fact that she's absolutely loving her experience in the classroom and we are absolutely delighted with that side of things. Her classroom staff are brilliant but appear to be having to plug gaps in the weaker areas of the school systems, which I don't believe is fair on them and I want to offer my time to the PTA or whatever to help with this, if appropriate.

They have a booking system for extra sessions and other things but it seems that the data from that doesn't actually get communicated to the staff delivering the sessions and we also need to communicate directly with them. That can't be right, surely? Badly set up system?

50% of the times I have had to ring the door to speak to reception, it's gone unanswered and I've had to abandon and try again another time. I could have phoned to say I was there but the phone has gone unanswered about 75% of the time too. Emails to the dedicated parent email address take about 3 days for a reply. There are 1.5 admin staff and it's a one form entry school, for context.

Are my expectations too high, or would it be reasonable for me to offer a bit of time and effort helping, for example, getting the new parent pack to be actually useful? I've worked in education forever but not primary so I don't know if this is just how it is.

We love the classroom side of things and don't want to rock the boat, but there are loads of things they could do to make everyone's life easier, in my view.

I expect they’d bite your hand off if you offered. Definitely worth asking.

In my experience these issues are very common though. It could be that the admin staff are overworked (1.5 doesn’t sound a lot to me even if it’s only single form entry) . Or that they’re just not that great and a bit overwhelmed (admin jobs in schools don’t pay well so may not attract the best candidates).

Another thing to add a bit of colour, they organised an open afternoon with about 24 hour notice for all parents on any form of waiting list or that had expressed interest. That to me was ridiculous but that's their kind of level of normal, I suspect that isn't how most schools would do it but I'm willing to be told I'm wrong.

It all just feels a bit amateurish and I want to help them, if my expectations are reasonable.

If you expect no communication and very poor admin then you won't be disappointed

Oh they're amazing at telling us on three different platforms when it's a different pudding the next day 🤣 (having worked in a special school I do realise that this is actually valuable, I'm not knocking it). I might say that actually, 'you know what you do with menu changes? Just do that with everything else too'

Our school admin frustrates too.

They seem incapable of understanding that by giving full information up front they can avoid so many parents getting in touch separately.

An example is a booked school trip. They’ve not gave us information as a group about the pick up time after (it’s after normal time) but have responded to individual parents when they’ve asked. Surely putting out full information, or circulating the information when a parent does request it and you realise others need to know, would save so much time here?!?

Similar boat where the communication is terrible compared to a corporate world where things are done in a timely manner, but the actual day to day life in the school is amazing so I accept that it’s just something I’ll have to put up with!

I'm sure they would be thrilled to have a free extra admin person if you offered to help. But, I would be realistic about how much change you could then effect, as an unpaid volunteer. You may find scepticism or fear of change to be an issue if you want to make lots of changes to the way they currently do things. Or they might simply view it as inappropriate for a volunteer to make changes. You won't know I suppose until you ask.

I bet the issue here is that the menu information is communicated clearly from an authoritative source (probably in writing) so they just take it and run with it.

Whereas visits/open days etc rely on them proactively getting the information from teaching staff who are busy and may not have had the time to fully think things through. And they don’t have the skills/confidence/proactivity to clarify that information, turn it into a plan and communicate it.

That is just based on my own experience in other lines of work (not education) but I reckon that’s the problem.

I was just going to offer to put together a suggested document of FAQs/things you need to know, having spoken with other parents, that they could give to people to save them answering the same problems over and over again... The times of the school day and wraparound aren't even on the website which isn't helpful if you're a prospective parent trying to work out if this one fits in with your work times/school run/whatever else. It's that basic!

Definitely offer. But also be as realistic as possible. 1.5 admin staff could be plenty of nowhere near enough, depending on which jobs they're expected to do. For example, they might also be in charge of medical needs, which could be a substantial role, especially if there are children with complex conditions like diabetes. Things will be communicated poorly at times. They are in all schools. But it'll matter a little less as your child gets older - nursery is the worst because it's less routine, and your child can't yet manage messages themselves.

Sounds like a real shambles to me and I’d be worried that if this is the accepted standard, what goes on in the classrooms is also low quality. I have an ongoing battle with our school over bad comms but your description makes our school look amazing! A little bit of chaos and last minute is one thing, basic info not being communicated is another. Ultimately it’s detrimental to the children if their parents have a poor relationship with the school because of things like this. Nothing annoys me more than last minute open sessions that could have been communicated in time but we’re told a day or two in advance, meaning the working parents generally can’t attend but the SAHPs can. DC then get upset 😢 Our school doesn’t seem very interested in change, which is odd really as you’d think they’d want to keep parents on side, so good luck!

Perhaps you could offer to keep the website up to date with all events - so a specific area of responsibility that actually targets the lack of daily updates?

I think school receptionists / admin have a lot to do, and for the staff, parental communication comes quite far down the list or priorities.

(Behind for example: school lunches, chasing missed payments, first aid, safeguarding issues, registers, medicine, chasing absent pupils, HT diary, getting in supply teachers, getting in plumbers etc)

I suspect there is also reliance on teachers to write their own letters for their class without any 'quality control' as to whether all details are included.

Helping out on important but non urgent things like new starter packs would probably be much appreciated.

It is likely that the office is massively under-resourced. I used to work in one. We were competent, conscientious, dedicated and enthusiastic but 1.5 of us were doing the job of 5 people and worked untold unpaid overtime. We were lucky to tick off 1 thing on our to-do in a day. You are constantly interrupted and required to respond to all manner of urgent unforeseeable issues throughout the day. We were also at the mercy of teachers not providing timely/correct information (they too massively overworked) and the SLT making last minute changes. It was by far the most challenging job I have had (and I've held much more senior managerial roles) and the most poorly paid. By all means offer to help but please don't go in thinking you need to show them how it should be done. They know that already.

Oh I definitely think it's the leadership not seeing the wood for the trees, rather than the admin team holding things up. Deciding to hold an open event at a day's notice, and not structuring the website to share key info at source is definitely a higher up decision!

Totally get the workload thing as a (secondary) teacher myself hence offering to help while I've actually got a bit of time to do so, but it's frustrating when they could save so much hassle and work being generated in the first place with a bit more thought.

The times of the school day and wraparound aren't even on the website which isn't helpful if you're a prospective parent trying to work out if this one fits in with your work times/school run/whatever else. It's that basic!

I'm not sure that any schools put the times of the school day on the website (I know because I'm often needing to look for that info for work-related purposes). I'd always assumed it was a safeguarding thing.

It's actually on the list of prescribed information that a school website should hold! The others locally (school application research!) do, not front and centre but only one or two clicks in on an obvious place.