UK Parents Want Emails and Texts from Schools

It is evident that internet and mobile communications have built a strong presence in our everyday lives and help us with tons of activities like monitoring our bank accounts or getting the latest news about sales or special offers from our favorite stores. Yet many feel that some of the most important fields of our real lives get less attention than deserved.

BBC has an interesting story today about parents in the UK willing to get more updates on their children performance at school by email or by SMS. Government education technology agency Becta ran a poll of 1,493 parents and found out that only one in 12 parents gets reports from school using one of these methods. And this is definitely not enough since a huge 68% of parents are willing to get such updates more frequently.

Almost three-quarters of those same parents told that they regularly check their bank account balance online or using text messages so it is just logical that they expect to have at least a similar level of control when it comes to their children performance at school since this area is at the very least equally important to them.

Hopefully the results of the study will push schools to build more transparent collaborative relationships with parents using the most advanced platforms like internet and text to eventually benefit each child. Also this may be a good hint for startups that are looking to build something but not sure where to go for ideas: start thinking about efficient multi-platform applications that could establish efficient connections between schools and parents and approach educational authorities to see if they may be willing to finance innovation in this area.

Photo by Brett L. used under Creative Commons