Skool Loop Says Cyclone Gabrielle Highlights The Importance Of Effective Communication Around Emergencies

Locally developed school communication app Skool Loop is calling on NZ schools to invest in tech that enables better communication in a crisis situation.

Its App, which allows schools to centralise communication in one place, has seen over 500 schools inform hundreds of thousands school parents via 962 push notifications over the past week alone. But it’s not enough!

“Across community Facebook pages, parents from schools without appropriate communication mechanisms have been crying out for better school communication. It’s difficult to access emails when your home is flooded; and equally so, relying on class teachers to make contact with each student’s parent is labour intensive and time consuming at best. Push notifications to parents enable a school to communicate ‘school leadership to community’ in a reliable, fast manner so that everyone is on the same page,” explains Sharlene Barnes, CEO and Founder of Skool Loop.

Following the Christchurch mosque shooting in 2019, Skool Loop was used by over 20 Central Canterbury schools to inform parents that their children were safe when schools were locked down and parents couldn’t access them. This helped avoid panic; and ensured parents of the schools using Skool Loop were able to follow changing safety guidelines around the incident. Similarly, during the floods, schools using Skool Loop have been able to keep parents informed instantly and without multiple layers of ‘clicks’ in parent portals or other Student Management Systems that make navigating email notifications time-consuming for users in a crisis."

“Given increasingly volatile weather; and incidents of a globally unsettling nature, it’s time all schools invest in fast and concise communication - after all the Skool Loop App is free to all schools! Our technology is used in Australia, the UK, US and Fiji and it’s available to all schools in NZ.”

“In 2023, excel lists of emails and unreliable databases of phone numbers simply won’t cut it in emergencies. With technology like Skool Loop, communication is instant and doesn’t rely on mobile data,” concludes Sharlene.

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