7 ways to perfect parental engagement

Parental engagement is more important than ever before. Here, we list 7 parental engagement tools that have received over 100 positive reviews between them on EdTech Impact. You can read our full parental engagement list here.

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Learning Ladders – connecting teaching in school and at home

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 4.95/5 from 15 reviews

Parents have access to teacher-written articles which link directly to their child’s Learning Ladders. Each article breaks the curriculum down into manageable chunks, explaining how the objective is taught at school and recommending ways parents can help at home. Teachers can add any supporting articles for any of the subjects, giving parents the knowledge and confidence to enhance their child’s learning at home, while also having the ability to share homework or home learning with parents with the functionality to add internal or external resources.

“We have been very happy with the parent portal, Ladders at Home,” explains Jeni Dellman, head of Primary School at British School Muscat in Oman. “We introduced it 2 years ago, and it has slowly grown in use within the parent community. When we moved to online learning in March this was something we were able to share again with our parents as an additional way to help and support at home. Being an international school, the translation tool has been incredibly well received.”

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MarvellousMe – giving parents positive news that’s learning and praise-led

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 5/5 from 1 review

Built by a once-disengaged dad, MarvellousMe makes families smile, inspires conversations about school, and gives parents tools to reinforce their child’s progress. The resource will not add to teacher workload/risk unnecessary contact, is typically used in plenaries, and empowers leaders to focus home support on key topics and rewards, values and learning powers. School offices also use MarvellousMe to send messages, newsletters/forms, award badges, and link parents to web pages, social media, payment/booking systems and more.

“It is a great app which gives control of parental engagement to teachers but senior leaders can monitor its use and ensure consistency and equity,” enthuses Pear Tree Community Junior School headteacher Andrew Sharp, who particularly enjoys “sharing learning and positive news on a daily basis.“

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Message Ninja – school / parents and inter-school comms made easy

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 5/5 from 2 reviews

All digital engagement needs in one app. Message Ninja replaces the burden of managing multiple communication tools and the need for expensive email and texts. Engage in group chats with other parents, or teachers, while maintaining the privacy of participants contact details. Create parents’ evening slots or any other type of booking vent, link payments as required. In the event of school closures or reducing person to person contact, the feature can be used to schedule remote calls with parents.

Kathryn Carlyle-Butlin, school business manager at Killisick Junior School, shares: “Message Ninja is very easy for parents to use, we had good feedback about the app. The support I had in setting up the app was brilliant. We use Message Ninja for Parents Evening Bookings; using the app has meant that teachers have not had to organise this themselves, which is a time consuming extra task.”

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mySchoolApp – updates on school news, events, payment requests and more

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 4.65/5 from 18 reviews

mySchoolApp boasts all the school app features needed to keep the ‘mobile generation’ of parents and carers up to speed on the phone in their hands.

Nicky Metcalfe, headteacher at The March CE Primary, elucidates: “It is so easy to use and set up, [there’s a] friendly support team if you need help, [it’s] paper-free, has reduced parent and school stress, and [the] ability to send an immediate reminder app is great. Parents respond quicker, and we can use this as a reminder for key events, therefore giving parents more opportunities to take part.”

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Satchel One – tools for staff, students and parents

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 4.35 from 21 reviews

Build your bespoke learning platform by selecting the apps that meet your school’s individual needs from our award-winning collection. Only ever pay for the apps you use and enjoy easy access for teachers, students and parents with everything under one roof.

Tina, a teacher from Redruth School, asserts: “The customer service is excellent, and they are very responsive to suggestions. The apps are easy to use and really enhance the system, for example it is super easy to tick off homework on the app if it is completed on a different website.”

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School App for Parents – everything parents need to know

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 4.7/5 from 61 reviews

Parents and guardians of pupils using School App for Parents enjoy their own personal view of a full calendar of events, activities and school news. The emphasis is on no more out-of-date paper calendars, searching through letters from the school or browsing the website – everything you parents and guardians need to know, when they need it, at their fingertips.

Magdalena Landziak of Athea National School reels off what she loves about School App For Parents: “Great service, help always when needed, lovely people, very professional, great idea to inform parents, easy to navigate app plus website, great design of app.”

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Evidence Me – observation, assessment and reporting app

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 4.75/5 from 2 reviews

Evidence Me from 2simple shows the impact of children’s learning by capturing learners’ experiences, monitoring their development, and creating reports to share their progress. Users can easily capture observations through a variety of media on the go, saving hours of valuable time.

Simon McLoughlin, a teacher and leader at Lanchester Endowed Parochial Primary School, writes: “Parents have been incredibly involved in Evidence Me during lockdown. They have submitted observations of their children at home and allowed us to keep up to date with their home activities. It is an excellent piece of software that is reactive to users’ needs. 2Simple took feedback on board and added extra features very quickly when these were requested.”

Got a Parental Engagement resource you’d like to add? List it here!