Schoop is an engagement app which aims to change the relationship between schools and parents.
The idea:
Schools need to communicate to parents in an easy, efficient, and effective way. Often, a combination of emails, texts, social media, Google groups, websites, and letters is used and parents can find it difficult to know where to look for information. Schools can find it time-consuming updating multiple platforms. There are also a lot of parents who are difficult to engage and may never want to set foot inside the school’s boundaries. Some parents have English as an additional language; some may just be so busy due to work or home life issues; other parents may have had a bad experience at school in their own childhood and are reluctant to engage with the school environment at all.
A developer in Wales explored the possibility of producing an app which could help improve engagement with parents. However, rather than just focusing on administrative information Schoop evolved to help schools increase communications with parents and get them more involved in their children’s education.
What happened?
The app was developed by working with parents, schools and academic experts. This resulted in a multilingual tool which gives schools a direct line of communication with parents. Parents sign up directly on the Schoop app using a code specific to their school and then select the groups (or chats) connected to their children, ensuring that all information received is relevant. Using push messages and notifications, important alerts, school events, newsletters, letters and permission forms are delivered directly to the palm of the parent’s hand.
This information is not just the administrative data from the school but also gives parents an opportunity to engage with the work their children have been doing that day. Parents can be sent prompts or questions to ask their children about the work they have been doing that day which might be of interest to the parents but are also an effective way of engaging with children and showing you share an interest in what why have been learning.
Importantly, Schoop gives people the ability to engage at arm’s length because it translates information and will also speak to parents in their language if they have any literacy issues. It is designed to make teachers lives easier as well as building more effective relationships between school and home.
Insights
- The private sector can find innovative solutions to issues facing the public sector.
- Engagement with service users in product design can significantly improve the final product.
Image: Photo by Nicole Honeywill on Unsplash