Reaching Families
One notice, from the policy that decides who may talk to whom, through composing and aiming it, into the four inboxes it lands in — and back again as a reply the school can see, moderate and answer. With per-recipient delivery, a retry on the one that failed, and what the sending actually cost.
Everything the school says, and whether it arrived
Most school communication fails quietly. The notice went to the year group instead of the class, the parent who most needed it had no email on file, the SMS bounced and nobody knew, and the reply came back to a teacher’s personal phone where the school will never see it again. This walkthrough follows one notice the whole way — who the school decided may talk to whom, how the audience is aimed, what the office sees per recipient afterwards, and what the same notice looks like in a staffroom, a pupil’s portal and a parent’s hand. Then it follows the reply back: the thread, the flag a teacher raised on it, and the decision the office takes. In-app notices and internal messaging are free and unlimited; email and SMS are metered, and the last screen is the meter.
On this page
Who may talk to whom
Before a single message is sent, a school has to answer a question most systems never ask: may a parent message a subject teacher directly? May a pupil message the bursar? May two pupils message each other at all? Getting this wrong is not a preference — it is a safeguarding incident — so it is one table, decided once, and the same table is what the send is checked against.
The matrix, and the switches around it
A grid of who may start a conversation with whom, per relationship. It is not advisory: the same rows that draw this grid are what the platform checks when somebody presses send, so a cell turned off is a message that cannot be composed rather than one that is discouraged.
Ready to run your school on this?
Every screen in “Who may talk to whom” is the live product, not a mockup. Create your school account, or have us walk you through it on a call.
Say it once, aim it properly
The whole value of a notice is in its audience. “Everyone” is the setting that trains people to ignore the school; the composer is built so that aiming a notice at exactly the right group is easier than aiming it at everybody.
The composer
Title, summary and body, then the two decisions that matter: who it is for and how it should reach them. The audience is resolved from the school’s own record — a grade, a class arm, a role, a named group — not from a mailing list somebody has to keep in step with reality.
The outbox, with the drafts and the scheduled ones in it
Everything the school has said, is about to say, or has half-written. The figures above the table are the ones an office actually asks for at 8am: what is live, what is queued for later, and what is still sitting in a draft nobody has finished.
See this on your own school’s data.
Every screen in “Say it once, aim it properly” is the live product, not a mockup. Create your school account, or have us walk you through it on a call.
Did it arrive?
This is the phase that separates a messaging feature from a messaging system. “Sent” is a claim about us; “delivered” is a claim about the recipient, and only one of those is worth anything to a school with an angry parent on the phone saying they were never told.
Per recipient, per channel — including the one that failed
The notice opened on its delivery record. Eight deliveries: six landed, one is still pending, and one SMS failed outright. The failure is named, the reason is on it, and Retry is right there — for that one recipient, not for the whole send, because re-sending to eighty-five people who already got it is how a school teaches its parents to ignore SMS.
And across every notice, not just this one
Volume, reach and read rates over the term. A single notice’s read rate is anecdote; the trend is what tells a school whether its parents have started ignoring it, which is the failure mode that matters and the one nobody notices until a real emergency.
Set this up for your team.
Every screen in “Did it arrive?” is the live product, not a mockup. Create your school account, or have us walk you through it on a call.
What it looks like to a member of staff
The next three phases are the same notice, arriving. They are short on purpose: the point is not that each inbox is elaborate, it is that there is no separate app, no second login, and nothing for the school to distribute.
In the staff workspace, beside everything else they have
Every employee has this from the day they are created — no grant required, no module to buy. Notices aimed at staff arrive here, marked with the channels they came by and whether this person has read them.
Ready to run your school on this?
Every screen in “What it looks like to a member of staff” is the live product, not a mockup. Create your school account, or have us walk you through it on a call.
What it looks like to a pupil
Pupils get the notices aimed at pupils, and nothing else. It is worth stating plainly because it is the most common way a school messaging system leaks: a notice aimed at parents about a child’s fees arriving in that child’s own portal.
Their own notices, and only theirs
The same component, the same filters, a different audience resolution. A pupil sees what was aimed at their class, their grade, their groups and the whole school — and never what was aimed at their parents or at staff.
See this on your own school’s data.
Every screen in “What it looks like to a pupil” is the live product, not a mockup. Create your school account, or have us walk you through it on a call.
What it looks like to a parent — and their reply
The parent is the reader the whole system is aimed at and the hardest one to reach: they are on a phone, they have three children at two schools, and they will not install anything. So the notice lands in a portal they already have, and the reply goes back to the school rather than to a teacher’s personal number.
One inbox for every ward
A guardian linked to two pupils gets the notices for both, in one place, under one login. They see what was aimed at parents and what was aimed at the school as a whole — and nothing that was aimed at staff.
And when they need to say something back
A thread with the school, inside the school’s own system. Who a parent may open a conversation with was decided in the first phase of this walkthrough — so the recipient list here is not a directory, it is that policy, rendered.
Set this up for your team.
Every screen in “What it looks like to a parent — and their reply” is the live product, not a mockup. Create your school account, or have us walk you through it on a call.
Threads, and the ones that need a grown-up
Direct messaging is where school software quietly becomes a safeguarding surface. The answer is not to ban it — staff and parents will simply use WhatsApp, where the school can see nothing — but to keep it inside a system where a conversation can be escalated, and where escalating it is one press for the teacher who is out of their depth.
The office’s own threads
The school’s side of every conversation it is part of. Same workspace the parent and the teacher use, which is deliberate: one implementation of messaging, four transports, so a fix or a policy change lands everywhere at once.
The moderation queue
When a message needs somebody more senior, whoever received it raises a flag and it lands here with the message, the thread and the reason attached. Flags arrive in drifts — one incident, one afternoon — so the queue is built to be cleared rather than browsed.
One flag, and the decision on it
A parent’s third unanswered message about a transport levy, escalated by the form teacher who could not defuse it. The office sees the message itself, the thread it sits in, who raised it and why — and then resolves or dismisses it, on the record.
Ready to run your school on this?
Every screen in “Threads, and the ones that need a grown-up” is the live product, not a mockup. Create your school account, or have us walk you through it on a call.
What the sending cost
Announcements, in-app notices, meetings and internal messaging are free and unlimited — they are part of the base platform and they cost us nothing to carry. Email and SMS leave our network and are paid for per send, so they are metered, and the school can see the meter rather than discovering it on a bill.
The meter, per dimension, with the free allowance shown
A month of sending, by channel, against the quantity each one includes for nothing. The bar that matters is the allowance bar: it says how much of the month’s included email the school has spent, which is the number that lets an office decide whether the next reminder goes by SMS or by notice.
See this on your own school’s data.
Every screen in “What the sending cost” is the live product, not a mockup. Create your school account, or have us walk you through it on a call.
Run your whole school on one connected platform
Start with the base package, switch on the modules you need, and give every parent, student and staff member a single place to log in.