King's School reports go online via SchoolPost
Parents receive alerts by email and follow the links to retrieve documents from the secure website
Parents of children at The King's School Ely have recently started receiving reports and assessments electronically via their KingsPost* accounts. The system emails them to let them know that the report is available, then they click a link and enter their password to retrieve the document.
The school is trialling a new addition to the SchoolPost system which makes it easy to disseminate reports and other personalised documents online. The batch of documents is uploaded to SchoolPost and the system takes care of the rest - automatically emailing every parent with a link to the appropriate report. The system is designed to take advantage of the immediacy of email coupled with the backup and security of web-based access to the documents themselves.
Parents - already used to receiving general school notices and messages electronically - have welcomed the new development as it means that they see details of their child's progress sooner, sometimes several days ahead of printed reports. With postal strikes looming the timing could not be more appropriate. The reports are also permanently stored within their web-based KingsPost account (along with all their other school messages) so that they can always refer back to them if needed rather than having to hunt for a printed copy.
Steve Dunlin, IT Manager at King's, commented "KingsPost has dramatically changed the way we communicate with parents since we first introduced it late in 2008. The system has really come into its own with this latest development - quickly and reliably getting important information out to parents. Feedback from parents has been extremely positive."
* KingsPost is the name used by The King's School for its customised implementation of the SchoolPost system. SchoolPost is an email, SMS and web-based school communication system supplied by Cambridge-based software developer Empetus Limited. Further details are available here.