Just really quickly to begin........Saturday was wonderful! Thank you so much to all the parents, grandparents, children, staff and friends from the community who came along to school on Saturday to support our first Environment Improvement day of the year. After four hours of work and 100 burgers and sausages later, plus another full skip the improvements are hopefully clear to see and enjoy! We will certainly be holding another such event early in January!
And so to the promised main point of this blog and it is a subject on which I would really value your thoughts. At St Jude's we work really hard to achieve the best possible communication with parents and the wider school community. Internally this is a challenge, with over 50 staff, a number of whom work part time, this is far from easy and it remains the one thing we still struggle a bit with. To counteract this some schools have set up their own staff "Facebook" groups or "Twitter" accounts and this has become their main form of communication. Now this is not something I can ever see us doing at St Jude's, but it has come up many times recently as a question from parents and colleagues who feel the school as a whole should have a Facebook page or Twitter account. I really would be very keen to hear your views, as parents, on this. My perspective as head is that we already do a great deal to communicate widely and increasingly effectively with yourselves as parents and I am uncertain as to what either of these forms of communication would bring to us. Our website is good and, providing it doesn't crash, remains a reliable method of communication. Parentmail is, I think, effective when we need to use it, provided we have the correct contact information for the recipients. We aim to make the newsletter comprehensive and informative and the information that comes from classes is now more consistent. In addition to this we are developing our school intranet for launch after Christmas and the "Meet the Headteacher / School Improvement Team" sessions give you regular opportunity to ask those questions which have been nagging away! As well as all of these methods, Rachael Osborne and I try to accommodate any request for short notice meetings and of course there is the 24 hour email access. So the purpose of this blog today is to actively seek your views on the suggestion that we should set up a whole school "St Jude's CE Primary School" Facebook page or Twitter Account. The question then is, should we do this and if so why should we? Thank you for your help with this!
Good morning!
ReplyDeleteI am one of the admin for the year 1 Facebook page for parents which has been running throughout the children's FS year. We have a CLOSED group and we have had requests from outsiders to join which have been denied. We don't post photos of our children, we share those on our personal pages but we do use the page to organise trips for the kids, to talk about homework set, to remind each other about mufti days etc and to keep in touch during absence when our kids are ill (chicken pox for example!). Some parents for very valid reasons don't use FB or Twitter.
Our page has also been useful when the school was closed because of the snow last year (hard to forsee now I know!) when the school website crashed and not everyone gets their text messages through from the school even though contact details are correct.
If a school FB and/ or Twitter page were to be set up I would of course join but I could forsee the information appropriate for me could get swamped with info appropriate for children further up the school. Also in my experience things can get a little heated in groups and this is not something I would want the teachers' time to be taken up with moderating and dealing with, they work hard, we want them planning, marking and relaxing so they are refreshed in the classroom. There could possibly be a misunderstanding if a teacher was on FB instead of doing what they do in the classroom!
Parents can also get very frustrated, angry and disheartened when their communications are missed and not answered. By adding more communication forms you as a school are allowing yourselves to miss even more.
You know I am a supporter of the school so please don't take this the wrong way. The school website is good but we need things like "Class of the week", "Headteachers Awards" and "Galleries" updating more often, I haven't seen a couple of these areas updated at all last year! The school text/ Email system needs to run smoothly for everyone. The little noticeboard at the bottom of the homepage is great but newsletters are not always uploaded as promptly. Surely these things need to be put in place before the school starts opening up more channels.
I will share this link on our FB page to highlight your blog post and ask other parents for their views too.
Love the blog page by the way Miss Waelend!! Sheila Smith x
Thanks as always, Sheila; really useful comments.
DeleteIt all depends what the aim is, is it communication between staff or between staff and parents? A closed FB group for the staff would be a good idea, assuming all are Facebook users but there need to be strict rules on what is posted on it. Facebook has changed recently and all privacy has gone out the window, so I wouldn't want any children information on it. I have never used Twitter so can't comment on that.
ReplyDeleteSharepoint is the way of the future but I'm not sure what the cost is or if it's been used in any Portsmouth school. Some basic info can be found http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/sharepoint-server-help/connect-teachers-students-and-parents-with-sharepoint-server-2007-HA010276973.aspx
This is what we will be using at Portsmouth City Council in the next few months.
Maria, thank you for this; again a useful contribution. I will certainly look into that.
DeleteI personally don't use Facebook and have no desire to. I am more than happy with how the school communicates via the website and have never had any problems accessing the weekly newsletter and year group updates. Whenever I have e mailed staff I have found that most respond to me within a few hours. I think, as Sheila pointed out, too many forms of communication can lead to confusion and so I am not personally keen to see a Facebook or twitter school account. I hope this helps
ReplyDeleteVicki Di Marco
Vicki, thank you for this contribution. This is where I am currently sitting on the matter, but it is great to get the perspective of parents too, so thank you. I think we almost have our answer!
DeleteI think adding another form of communication will confuse things. All staff have their own email accounts which parents can contact them by & they do get back to you promptly, although making them more easily available would help, so what would you be using FB & t Twitter for?
ReplyDeleteThere are some pages on the website that need updating more frequently so personally I think you should mainly concentrate on that & not be starting anything else.
It has confused things a little here by sending home hard copies of some things & not others that I've found on the website. The children weren't overly sure what they were supposed to be doing either & when I queried with the teacher I was told as long as they do something it doesn't matter!
Communication has got better, apart from a couple of blips at the start of this term, so don't really think you should confuse things anymore! Not everyone uses them FB, the majority of people can access the website one way or another, parent mail works when you use it & also parents can inform each other which we do anyway.
Thank you Nicky. I think there is a common theme developing in the comments on the blog and the emails I have received. Parents are keen to get the website as comprehensive as possible before taking anything else on. Thank you again for your thoughts.
DeleteI think maybe the idea of Having a school Facebook account will influence the children into using it which they should not because it is not age appropriate
ReplyDelete