School Trips & Online Parent Consent: A Better Way

School Trips and Online Parent Consent: A Better Way.

It may feel like a few light-years away, but we are all looking forward to schools getting back to near normal for the new academic year. It’s important to plan ahead and remember that before COVID-19, there were other problems within school administration!

“I’ve lost the letter”
“I haven’t seen the letter”
“I gave Jonnie the letter”

You’ve heard it all before, right? The headache of needing parent consent for a school trip or other school activity and waiting for the few reply slips to trickle in, knowing that you will have to individually chase at least half.

Imagine… creating a school trip online within a smart software system that holds all of your student and parent data (from your MIS), where you can create the trip event online, invite students to it and have a consent request sent directly to their parents. Parents simply check a box in their SchoolsBuddy account to register their consent (you can add notes and terms if needed); a 2-second job.

Parents love SchoolsBuddy. Everything can be found in one place, from school communications to a personalised calendar including trips and clubs and, optionally, their payment balance. Once a parent has submitted their consent, if you opt to use our payments module, the trip cost will immediately appear on the parent’s account for them to pay online.

But don’t worry, if you get some parents who haven’t submitted their consent, a single click will remind them all that their consent is outstanding.

Additional benefits of our trip management include attendance registers which are auto-generated and can be recorded on a mobile device, perhaps on the bus before you leave school. You can communicate directly with the parents of the children on the trip, and their personal calendar will be automatically updated with the trip and its details (don’t forget to bring a waterproof coat!).

If things don’t get back to normal as soon as we had hoped, a one-click cancellation will send a notification to all the parents with children on the trip within seconds. It will also be possible to quickly credit any monies paid into their SchoolsBuddy parent wallet (if payments are in use).

Let’s hope our children can enjoy trips again soon, but remember that it’s never too late to find a better way.  Schedule a demo now.