TM4T Using Your System 3.2.9 - Admin Work: Parental Communication

Now, like many tasks on this list, 'parental communication' is not always regarded as admin work. Teacherly types will see it as a key process in ensuring common perspective on a students development, and, well, lots of stuff like that.

However, on this website, parents have no special status: they are just buckets for a flow of information and we want to do this efficiently. The options are obvious:

a) newsletters, circulars, copy letters etc: do no more that type the message; and as far as possible get your administration team to do the rest (ideally electronically)

b) e-mail: not ideal for any news with an emotional element (this applies to virtually anything for some parents). Nevertheless, an extraordinarily efficient way of communicating. Make sure:

- there is a generic e-mail account to despatch parental e-mails and seek to have any incoming messages monitored by your admin team.

- you keep a copy of all outgoing and incoming messages forever. If you don't know how to archive messages, ask help from your technical support team.

- get all messages copyread before hitting 'send'. If that isn't possible, save all messages overnight and re-read them in the morning before sending.

- you know the preferred house style for your school. If you don't have one, then develop your own.

c) telephone: my preferred way of phone communication is not, alas, free. For details, click here..

d) face to face: the best way, but horribly inefficient. Make sure you know what you want to achieve.