Communication between school and home should be effortless. At secondary level, many students are glued to their smartphone, relying on instant messaging, social media and text to communicate, with email increasingly seen as “old school”. Schools are trying to engage with these new mediums, using Facebook or Twitter or other communication Apps to get the […]
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4 emergency communication must-haves for early childhood centres
March, 2018
Cyclone season is upon us and singing “rain, rain go away, come again another day…” isn’t likely to stop it. Disruptive weather, natural disasters and other emergencies aren’t uncommon experiences for Kiwi children at early learning centres. That’s why a water-tight communication strategy comes in handy, when it’s not business-as-usual for your centre. Parents need […]
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Is your school emergency messaging strategy prehistoric?
February, 2018
The Jurassic Park movie would have ended a lot differently if the park coordinators had come up with a more robust emergency plan in the event of the power going out. Although school emergency communication strategies don’t really need to plan for ‘in the event of cloned dinosaurs escaping’, we recommend for New Zealand schools […]
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How an attendance management system can help reduce truancy rates
February, 2018
Following on from our last article on how parent engagement can help with reducing truancy rates at your school, having a Ministry of Education approved attendance management or early notification system can aid in this as well. Early Notification (EN) is the use of text and/or email messages to notify parents that their child is […]
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Keeping your School-links database up to date
February, 2018
Areas which will require updating now Students & Caregivers One of the questions we get asked in the new year is, “what about updating last year’s data?”. If you have been uploading your data file to School-links, then you will continue to do that. The standard data upload CSV files sent into School-links will update […]
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Reduce truancy rates by connecting with parents
January, 2018
The issue of truancy for New Zealand schools reared its head again at the end of 2017, with attendance rates falling even further than previous years. The Ministry of Education reported the number of students regularly attending school fell from nearly 70 percent in Term 2, 2015 to 67 percent in the same period last […]
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Tips for a Terrific Term 1
December, 2017
The heat is on and the pressure’s high! We understand how busy this time of year can be and there is still plenty to do. While we’re all looking forward to getting a break during the holiday season, the team here are not going to take our foot off the gas until we get done what […]
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[VIDEO] School-links Emergency Alerts App
November, 2017
As School Principal or Office Manager, how do you notify parents, students and staff in the event of an emergency? Imagine there has been an earthquake, a fire alarm, or a bomb scare and you have had to evacuate the school. No access to Internet. No access to a computer… No problem. Log in to […]
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Support local businesses and raise funds for your next school project
September, 2017
You can now feature business ads in your school newsletters. It’s simple. You offer businesses the opportunity to promote themselves in the school newsletter. School-links manages the advertising designs, layout and copy. Businesses are billed monthly directly by School-links. A percentage of advertising revenue goes to the school for fund raising. A win-win for communities Support […]
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The calm during the storm: how communication tools can minimise disruption to your school community
August, 2017
Most of New Zealand has been battered by storms over the last few weeks, from ice and snow closing roads to rain causing flooding, slips and states of emergency being declared across multiple cities and regions. Fortunately for schools, a lot of this disruption happened during the school holidays. However, forecasters predict that we will […]
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