%20(1).svg)
.png)
Back in the day, I helped build some amazing brands - with orange being perhaps the most notable example. Last into the market, within 4 years we had transformed the industry and took the last entrant in the market to #1. We achieved this by focusing myopically on understanding where best to engage with our customers and how we could become relevant in their lives to create ‘share of voice’.
In short, we adopted a customer-centric approach to everything that we did to create an emotional bond between orange and our audience. They wanted to engage with us and that is why we won.
For decades, schools have relied on a passive ‘social contract’ with parents to ensure children attended classes, were ready to learn and dressed and behaved appropriately. It broadly worked because there was an implied trust (a bond), and no other alternatives were available.
Then along came lockdown and home learning. It was no longer ‘just school’ but rather a blend of approaches to continue learning at home using digital as the pivot. Forward-wind three years and the bond between parents and schools is most definitely broken.
Attendance and behaviour is poor, not just in the UK but globally; in the UK, only 3 in 10 parents are happy that they are doing all they can to support home learning; 36% of teachers have been verbally abused by parents in the last year ; and we have seen a remarkable 25% increase in complaints to Ofsted over the same period.
Here’s a worrying fact – 28% of parents no longer believe that attendance at school every day is necessary. It just isn’t as relevant anymore, or as compelling for them. This isn’t a result of a poor product as education in the UK is something still to celebrate. But where we have gone wrong is that we failed to understand how to maintain our ‘share of voice’ given other factors competing with parent time and focus. We didn’t stay ‘customer-centric’ and diluted our [brand] value. Parents have fallen out of love with school.
Research from the excellent Centre for Social Justice published just last month shows that parents face many barriers when helping to support their children. 25% cite time as the main factor, but over half lack the resources, confidence or knowledge to help guide learning from home. As crucially, communication is seen as one-way – email dominates alongside other passive media such as text messages or newsletters. It gets lost in the blur of daily life.
Given pressure on teacher time, I guess ’instructional’ communication might be an inevitable consequence. But the unintended outcome is that parents don’t feel listened to or valued. In fact, 38% of parents do not feel schools communicate well enough and that in itself should be ringing alarm bells. Clearly, communication has to become proactive, move two-way and engage parents in a way that reflects their daily behaviour and routine.
Just last month (February ‘24) I received an email from EdTech Impact highlighting the 39 providers on their platform providing parental engagement apps. Thirty nine, wow!
It struck me that if there are 39 apps then actually none can be working that well? Else surely they’d be a dominant provider (or two/three) with a much shorter list of challengers?? It just seems like there is no dominant player at all - and this is against a context that over 99% of apps ultimately fail – so the only conclusion is that none have found the ‘secret sauce’ to create any meaningful bond with their audience.
Looking more closely, I’m not surprised given the total absence of any obvious myopic customer focus. Most apps are in fact school-centric and built around reporting and other tools useful for leadership, and just give a passing nod to parents. They’re talking to the wrong audience, have the wrong focus and can never create any sustainable parent relationship.
The few apps that have recognised a need to build out something more parent-centric again haven’t thought through how to be relevant and where to engage with their audience.
Parents use on average 29 apps and will mostly access via a smartphone. Smartphone users use just 8-9 apps regularly, these being typically made up from 3-4 social networks (Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and WhatsApp dominate), Google Maps, banking, email, music and shopping.
I cannot for a minute see how plugging a 30th [education] app into this landscape will in any way move the needle. Who are you going to displace, what behaviours will this change, and why?? These apps I am afraid are badly founded and will be in the 99% who fail.
.png)
In the same period since lockdown, social media consumption by parents has increased by over 40% to average well over 2 hours every day, and in core audiences for primary schools (Millennials and Gen X) Facebook is used by up to 93% of parents. That’s huge.
Let me pose a question: if today you were launching a new product for parents and needed them to engage with your brand, would you market to them using email, texts and your learning/Teams platform, or would you harness the multi-media tools in social platforms to deliver compelling, two-way engagement?
The answer is you’d do all of the above but segment your communication clearly. Texts, messaging and emails shouldn’t be discarded, but they are functional broadcast tools which cannot create a bond. Use these to inform and tell parents what they need to know but recognise their limitations.
Adopting social as an additional string to your bow delivers a valuable opportunity to build engagement, participation and partnership. Parents need to be heard and valued, not just by the school but also their peers and community. Social media creates a precious dynamic centred around two-way, collaborative engagement and does so in a way that is both relevant and customer-centric. That’s why it has close to 100% adoption in Gen X – they love it!
Facebook spawns communities, sparks engagement and fosters collaboration.It builds reputation and relationships, and with the advent of AI and listening technologies increasingly allows dialogue to be managed and delivered at time when it will be best received. This can now be achieved automatically requiring little if any manual (teacher) support.
For example - and this goes back to relevancy– Hootsuite suggests the best time for social posts on Facebook are on weekday afternoons before 3pm, just before most primary school children will start doing their homework. Being able to automatically push relevant content / resources to invite a dialogue with and between parents to help support home learning couldn’t be better timed. It makes make school more relevant and starts building a bond.
As I said at the outset, achieving a relevant share of voice is a key factor for success in building trust relationships. Given that parents are spending two hours combined per day on social media it should be relatively straightforward to achieve quick traction and engagement. It is my belief that the Facebook Group facility if deployed properly is the ‘key to the door’ in creating a much-needed partnership with parents. It’s come on leaps and bounds in the last 6-12 months and offers a safe, secure solution to increase parent participation.
Great partnerships – just like any other relationship in life – have to be transparent, mutual and nurturing. Building a Group based around a class (containing only parents/carers of pupils and a teacher) with the clear purpose of “helping better support learning from home” would tick all of the boxes, and allow the community to engage as one. Suddenly school is relevant again and part of the social daily diet.
This shift is needed now. It can help all children because social is ubiquitous. It fosters community and it is most definitely customer-centric. With an appropriate structured framework, parental partnership can not only be supported but celebrated. Parents have a voice and can be heard, involved in decision-making and supported in their wider parenting skills (note: they already use Facebook for this anyway).
But most of all, I believe that building a bond will help parents learn to love school again. And for our leaders, teachers and children this cannot come soon enough.
