Vaughan Couillault, Principal of Papatoetoe High School, shares his experience of navigating an outbreak of COVID that directly impacts a school and community. Papatoetoe High School, a co-educational year 9–13 school in South Auckland, was thrust into the limelight during the February 2021 COVID outbreak. At 11.30am on February 14th Vaughan received, “a very unpleasant […]
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Winter means weather closures. How will you get your message out?
May, 2021
Question: with winter fast approaching and extreme weather seemingly the norm these days, how are you going to contact your school community in an emergency? Answer: Don’t use an app or social media. Do you know how many parents have downloaded your school app or use Facebook? It varies from school to school, but we […]
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Five benefits of an Early Notification (EN) Attendence Management System over a school messaging app
May, 2021
What is ‘Early Notification’? An Early Notification (EN) system is much more than a school messaging app. EN is the use of text and/or email messages from the school to the parents to alert caregivers to an unexplained absence from school, not an app for parents to let the school know that a student will […]
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Your school noticeboard could be critical in an emergency
January, 2021
The next in our series of thought leadership pieces on communicating in and during an emergency. Amy Carter, now Chief Executive Officer of the Christchurch Foundation, and Managing Partner of Carter, Price, Rennie back when the Christchurch earthquakes occurred, shares her thoughts about communicating without power. Old school and new school both have a role […]
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Preparedness Makes All The Difference
October, 2020
The first in a series of thought leader pieces on communicating during and after an emergency. What can the education sector learn from the business world? Graham Dockrill, serial entrepreneur, investor, company director and business consultant, says it all comes down to thinking about what information you will need, and how you are going to […]
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Thinking about your communications?
September, 2020
Here are five questions for your senior leadership team to help you evaluate the effectiveness of your communication strategy in the event of an emergency. How many parents/caregivers have downloaded your chosen communication platform? Of those, how many have enabled push notifications? How many parents/caregivers follow your social media channels? What is the typical response […]
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Beep4Alumni available to schools
August, 2020
Following up on the exciting launch of a sister product to School-links, Beep4Business are now in the position to be able to offer Beep4Alumni to schools, universities, and colleges for koha donations. Beep4Alumni will allow schools to easily and effectively connect with past students. You can use Beep4Alumni to: Send regular newsletters Promote events and […]
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School-links develop cutting edge comms platform – available to community groups for koha donations
August, 2020
App, text and email tool ‘Beep4Business’ now available to the arts, sports, churches and not-for-profits Andrew Balfour, CEO and founder of School-links, is offering his new multichannel communication platform ‘Beep4Business’ for koha donations to support the community sector as it battles with the ongoing impact of Covid19. Workers and volunteers have spent hours during the […]
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Transforming school-to-home communication
August, 2020
Hamilton Girls’ High School share how they raised their game using data-synchronisation between KAMAR and School-links Long-time users of School-links Early Notification system, Hamilton Girls’ High School (HGHS) recently shifted to using School-links messaging functionality. Taking advantage of the seamless daily data synchronisation between KAMAR and School-links, HGHS now use School-links for all mass communication […]
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Communicating through the COVID-19 response
June, 2020
Schools and early childhood centres talk about how they utilised School-links Emergency Alerts during the COVID-19 lockdown We spoke to a number of our schools and early childhood centres to see how they used School-links during the COVID-19 response, both to inform our own ongoing platform development, and to share good practice with other organisations. […]
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