The pandemic has presented us with many challenges, but it has also forced us to become far more innovative, and find solutions that we will keep post-pandemic.
Take parents' evenings. The British School Al Khubairat (BSAK), like the majority of schools the world over, had followed a pattern and format of parents' evenings that had been in place for years.
When the pandemic hit, we decided to continue with parents' evenings despite parents not being able to access the school campus, and it became apparent that we required a system that parents could access online, ensure effective timekeeping and allow for confidential conversations.
After much exploration of ways in which the meetings could go online, we decided to use SchoolCloud.
'Immediate benefits'
It is easy to set up and manage and straightforward to use for parents and staff. We have seen immediate benefits and the vast majority of feedback from parents and teachers is that this is the way forward.
Not only have we managed to migrate overnight to a much desired online parents' meeting system, but we have also improved timekeeping of appointments, ensuring a more efficient evening, negating late appointments, preventing people from "jumping the queue" because a teacher's desk is empty. Recording and monitoring attendance is more straightforward.
I also think there is another huge benefit that we often overlook: we have removed many vehicles from being on the road and parked around the school site during these evenings.
This is not only beneficial to the environment, but also a huge health and safety improvement as people are not required to drive to school at the end of the day, when already fatigued.
We certainly believe SchoolCloud has supported the move to remote parents' meetings and would recommend it to others.
Mark Leppard MBE is headteacher at the British School Al Khubairat in Abu Dhabi.
If you’re interested in learning how SchoolCloud parents' evening can help your school, contact us today.
