Leverstock Green CofE Primary School

Phase: Primary

Local Authority: Hertfordshire

Objectives:

One system to meet all of Leverstock Green School’s needs – communications, payments, club management and parents evening.

Solution:

A system that was already trusted and working well within the school. A system that integrated seamlessly with SIMS.

Outcome:

Reduced frequency of trips to the bank from once a week to once a term. Breakfast and After-School clubs can be run without the need for additional admin staff.

How Schoolcomms helped Leverstock Green reach their goals

Leverstock Green had three main goals in mind when adopting a new system:

Cashless office
Communication system for emails/texts that had the potential to be sent free of charge
One system for all of our needs – communications, payments, club bookings and parents evenings

“We already knew that the system was easy to use due to previous experience. All our requirements were met with one system and the integration with SIMS makes life easier for staff.”

Leverstock Green realises the value offered by Schoolcomms

With the adoption of Schoolcomms, Leverstock Green deduced that the Clubs add-on has been perfect for managing the bookings and payments.

The school was also pleased to know that they had the option to add to the ‘wishlist’ requesting additional functionality.

What parents and staff feel about SchoolGateway

Leverstock Green received positive response from parents and staff alike:
“Most parents are very positive about it – they like having a single app for communications, payments, clubs, and event bookings. Staff like the system for paying for meals, printing registers for clubs and live bookings for parents evenings.”

Overcoming challenges…

Getting parents to use the app and not bring in cash and cheques for trips or uniform was one of the challenges the school was afraid to take on. The school was able to easily overcome them by making these small yet effective efforts:

“We have produced basic instructions on making bookings and payments for parents and have a laptop available in school to assist parents with limited IT experience through the process of setting up the App or using School Gateway. We have also ensured all new parents to the school adopt the app.”

The impact of adopting Schoolcomms

The school found Schoolcomms to be an efficient auditable system that was extremely effective at tracing who has paid and when. They especially found that the reports provided analysis on all payments/bookings/usage/communications, which helped the school to provide Leadership/Governors with effective data to make decisions.

Additionally, the school found:
“71% of parents have the app so are free to message, previously we paid for all texts after our initial bundle was used. The Parents Evening System has changed organising parents evenings from a completely manual process to an automatic one. This has been a huge saving on admin time.”