Taking the pain out of an enrichment programme

From after-school clubs to trips and events, enrichment is an important and often much-loved part of a child’s education. With sign-ups, parent communications and consent, attendance records, taking payments and all sorts of other things to think about, running an enrichment programme can be a headache – but not with SchoolsBuddy!
In today’s post, we’re looking at how SchoolsBuddy can take the pain out of running an enrichment programme at your school. Here are some of the ways it can help…

Multiple sign-up options

First things first, you need a fair way to allow parents to sign their kids up to your programme and individual activities within it. With SchoolsBuddy, you can choose between multiple different sign-up options, including first come first served and ‘preference-based’ sign-ups.
Preference-based sign-ups remove the ‘race’ associated with activity sign-ups and give everyone an equal chance of being enrolled in the activities they like the look of. This is a fairer way of ensuring everyone gets a chance of signing up for popular activities, and means the same parents that get there first don’t always get the pick of the bunch. We’ve found this leads to happier parents all round!

A personalised view

On the subject of sign-ups, how do you make sure parents can only sign up for the activities relevant to their child? Our answer: a personalised view for each parent that only shows them the activities and programmes their child is eligible for.
For example, for a Grade 7 enrichment programme, only parents of Grade 7 students would be able to see the available activities and book onto them. This keeps things simple by immediately stopping parents from inadvertently signing up for activities designed for a different Grade.

Easy attendance recording

If you’ve ever run an enrichment programme ‘on the ground’ before, you’ll know that when you’re out in the open air, it’s easy for paper-based attendance lists to get blown away, dropped in the pool or meet some other unfortunate fate. With SchoolsBuddy, recording attendance couldn’t be easier. The mobile-friendly SchoolsBuddy app lets you record attendance digitally from wherever you are, whether it’s out on the sports field or on a school museum trip.

Simple timetables

It can be tricky for parents to keep up with what activities their child has and when – and for parents with more than one child in school, it’s even trickier! Not with SchoolsBuddy, which takes the pain out of complex timetables by showing parents all their children in one view – either on the app or on the web browser.
The app shows them, at a glance and on the go, an auto-populated diary showing what activities each child has, where they’re located and what time they’re at, reducing the likelihood that they’ll be late for an activity or even miss it altogether.

Parent communications

The ability to communicate quickly and easily with parents is crucial for a successful enrichment programme, from gaining consent to keeping them updated about any changes or cancellations. It’s also an important part of making parents feel involved in the school community!
SchoolsBuddy makes parent communication easy, allowing you to send messages to specific groups of parents – such as grades, classes or a particular activity group – to keep them fully informed. Each message also gets sent to parents’ email addresses, reducing the risk of them missing important information. And, with one-click cancellation that automatically sends an email out to parents, communication will be one less thing to worry about if you have to cancel an event or activity due to unforeseen circumstances.

Reporting

Finally, you’ll want to know the outcomes of your enrichment programme. The comprehensive reporting available through SchoolsBuddy means it’s easy to understand activity and programme attendance, and to break it down by grade level and other metrics. In short, you’ll have all the information you’ll need to see how your programme is going, at your fingertips.
If you’d like to learn more about using SchoolsBuddy to run your school’s enrichment programme, drop our sales team a line and we’ll answer all your questions. We can even arrange a demo to help you see how it could work for your school!