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Jewellery Quarter Academy Case Study
Improving Parent Communication For A Secondary School In Birmingham
Jewellery Quarter Academy is a secondary school with around 500 students in Birmingham. They first contacted us on March 10th and moved fast, launching their customised app to parents in just 3 days. Jamie Barton, Deputy Headteacher, told us how they were getting on with their app.
Getting An App Up And Running In Just 3 Days
Jewellery Quarter was looking for an app to improve parental engagement, but when coronavirus accelerated it quickly adapted it into a central online reference point for student learning resources
How did the school envisage using its app and how did this change in response to Covid-19?
Initially, Jewellery Quarter Academy shared learning resources via PDFs on the app to reach all families, as many lacked laptops. In response, they provided laptops to ensure every family had a device to access the app. Ensuring access for lower-income families was key to supporting home learning.
Instant push notifications helped share updates on learning resources and information like free school meal vouchers. The forms feature improved data collection and boosted parent engagement.
When the Academy sent a message urging parents to apply for vouchers, they received over 100 responses in just 2 hours.
How Has The App Changed Their Communication Strategy?
Very few parents were engaging meaningfully with the website, whereas they do with an app.“ Having something that is in the palm of your hand has been a game-changer”. Push notifications are used to launch the week, share learning strategies and to point parents to where further information is housed.
Having its own app has enabled Jewellery Quarter to provide a centralised hub of information that is easily accessible by their whole audience. Parental engagement has increased, it played a vital role in communications during coronavirus and “it’s one of the main success stories of this academic year”.
Now I feel like we don’t have anybody that is unreachable
— Jamie Barton
Deputy Headteacher
— Jamie Barton
Deputy Headteacher
How easy has their app been to use?
Staff love the app and regularly suggest new content. Both staff, parents, and students use it to stay updated, with alerts serving as reminders. Form tutors refer to it during weekly check-ins with students.
Mr Barton and the Office Manager manage the app easily. “It only took 30 minutes to train the Office Manager,” said Mr Barton. After training, they quickly launched the app with minimal fuss, with the Office Manager handling admin updates and Mr Barton overseeing teaching updates.
Mr Barton finds managing the app convenient, updating it from his phone or laptop wherever needed.
Which Other Features Of The App Are They Using And Why?
The app’s versatile design allows quick updates. Jewellery Quarter added an extra-curricular section with daily themes like Monday Masterclasses and Friday Fun, with each year group contributing. They also included myth busters about COVID-19 and use forms to gather student suggestions for the student parliament.
Has the app been a hit with parents?
Their app has “become the chief medium of communication between the school and families”. This has provided a unique opportunity to bridge the gap between the classroom and the home and the use their app to signpost helpful information and frequently asked questions. “Now I feel like we don’t have anybody that is unreachable”. So far Jewellery Quarter has had 800 downloads, 197 of these by Friday of the first week. In a recent ‘Our new app’ survey, 89% of parents were positive about the impact the use of the app has had: “It’s amazing, I like the hands-on information, it is very informative and easy to use”.
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