Private Schools Texting to Parents and Students
The number of students who are studying in private schools in the US is increasing steadily in the last few decades. Similarly, the number of private schools is always in an upward direction. According to the data available, 34576 private schools, which form a share of 10% of the total number of schools, are imparting education to almost 5.7 million students.
The huge popularity of private schools and the increasing number of students enrolling in these schools make it important to ensure safe and secure school operations. The safety of the students is of paramount importance for the schools, parents as well as state authorities. To ensure safe school operations, the private school operators have to ensure the correct and quick communication with the parents, students, and administration.
Therefore, all private school operators deploy various latest technological means to establish communication with all stakeholders. These communication means include telephone calls, email, letters, and personal meetings. Sending a short message, called SMS is one of the communications performed by mobile phone. The sender can type the message and send to the receiver.
The SMS texting services were first introduced in 1985 by using Global System for Mobile Communication standard.
The service of sending SMS through text has become so popular among private school operators and the reasons thereof have been mentioned below:
- Ø By using texting, the schools can save huge funds spent on paper, printing, workforce, electricity, and telephone bills.
- Ø Being a two-way communication means, texting achieves a fully safe and enhanced way of exchange of information and ideas.
- Ø Any digital device like mobile, internet, computer, or mass SMS dashboard of the school can send text messages.
- Ø The private school operators use a text message as a security password to ensure the safe pick-up and drop off the students.
- Ø For sending or receiving text, no special software, data connection, or any particular expertise is required. Any normal prudence person can text on any basic mobile handset.
- Ø Where high-end smartphones are considered a security hazard, a basic mobile handset is used to send text messages.
- Ø The schools send mass texts to parents and obtain quick acknowledgment about any issue.
- Ø The text message has a lower risk of hacking and is a safer way of communicating.
The above-mentioned unique and interesting features have rendered the texting way of communication as the most favorable among the private school operators. The popularity of texting has always been in the upward direction. The attractiveness of texting has created several unique facts about it. A few of them have been mentioned below:
- Ø In 90% of the cases, the receiver reads the text message within 3 minutes.
- Ø There are almost 6 billion mobile phones whereas the number of email accounts is just about 3.6 billion.
- Ø 91% of people keep their phone handy all the time whereas 84% of emails land in the spam folder and are never read.
- Ø Only 2.95% URL links sent through emails are clicked whereas 36% URL links sent through the text are clicked.
- Ø The receiver opens only 22.5% of the emails whereas 99% of text messages are opened.
- Ø SMS texting engages six to eight times more than emails.
- Ø The customers redeem the text coupon 10 times more than the one sent through email.
The utilities of the texting way of communication for private schools are cost-effective and result oriented. The school authorities perform various tasks and deliver information to the parents and students. Some of these tasks are mentioned in the below points:
v The school provides information about the school timing and schedule of other important events.
v The school informs the parents about any sudden and emergency changes in the timing or closing of the school.
v The school sends reminders to the students about the submission of notes, project reports, and other tasks.
v The school sends a reminder about various meetings and get-togethers, which are not part of academic activities.
v The school informs the parents about the sudden absence of the student or any suspicious behavior of the student.
v Quick reminders are sent to the students about the availability of a new lesson or project report status.
v The school sends various awareness campaigns to the students and parents through text. For example, awareness against ragging and sexual harassment.
v The school authorities also inform the parents through text messages about the good performance of the student.
v The schools inform about the result of the term-end or annual examinations by using texting services.
v The school authorities inform the parents about any incidence of indiscipline committed by the student and secure the meeting with the parents if required.
These are a very few of the tasks and objectives achieved by the private schools by sending text messages to the students and parents. Additionally, there are several other utilities of the texting service used by the school operators including advertising campaigns for the academic achievements to attract fresh admissions and thus increasing their business. In some cases, with the consent of the parents, the school runs various private campaigns through texts to earn social recognition and reputation.
In the current scenario, if we look around us, we find every private school having its own texting service platform, which is used to send information to all its members. The schools have set up their own texting platform using various databases, shortcodes, and keywords. This database contains mobile numbers of school authorities, parents, and students.
The beauty of the texting is that you can filter the recipient if you do not want to send the text to all in a particular group. With the use of the internet-enabled platform, the schools can send the message anytime irrespective of the school working hours.
The texting platform can incorporate various technological inputs like QR code reader and can have various templates. The parents and students can use these default templates for ease.
Considering the initial set-up and operating cost, the usage of the texting platform is economical, reasonable, and suitable. No specially qualified person is required and a normal prudence operator can comfortably operate the texting platform. These reasons made texting so popular among private school operators.
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