8 tech predictions for schools in 2020

Founder and CEO, Susan Burton describes eight predictions that should be on the agenda of Head Teachers and Governors for 2020

Every new year there are plenty of soothsayers sharing their predictions for the next twelve months and beyond. As we enter a new decade it seems that these articles or ‘listicles’ are even more prolific. Prevalent headlines for 2020 are around cyber security, artificial intelligence and in the case of Edtech, social emotional learning.

We’ve picked up on eight trends that potentially impact school communities.

1. Paperless

Parents are telling us that school communications that come via book bags on bits of paper are no longer acceptable. Children are aware of the environment and parents and school staff need to walk the talk. Our Ambassadors (PTAs and school staff) are making it a policy to stop generating paper based communications and non digital event tickets. They want communication to be filtered and frictionless — right now this means via mobile. Not only will more trees be protected and savings made on printing costs, digital communication offers school communicators essential feedback data. In 2020 schools should be able to track and evaluate the effectiveness of their communication to parents. They should expect email open rates of over 50% and much higher, in the 70% range and above for text.

2. Cashless

Parents expect to make payments to school or to their PTAs with less than three clicks on their mobile. Parent Associations are refusing to accept cheques and paper forms for event tickets due to the extensive manual administration involved in processing them. The majority of parents no longer have a cheque book. Communication software in 2020 should also offer on-demand payment functionality and the ability to issue e-tickets and automatic attendee reports.

3. Personalisation including Multi-lingual

Communication from the school to parents will need to be more personalised if it is to cut through the noise of email and social media bombarding parents. Each communication will need to be tailored to each parent taking into account their children’s ages and years, interests and language spoken at home. Schools in the USA, UK and Australia are making sure Apps offer multilingual capability to support their inclusiveness targets. Communication will also be based on past behaviour, individual levels of engagement and interest. Parents increasingly use social media to communicate with each other. Schools can gain more control over these conversations, ensuring they are respectful to fellow parents and staff, by using a ‘walled garden’ platform vs generic social media such as Facebook and WhatsApp. Schools want a trusted platform where they know only their parents are group members and content can be moderated.

4. Remote working

In 2020 we will see more parents working remotely and as freelancers. On the one hand this offers parents greater flexibility to be at the school gate and to be more involved in their children’s lives. On the other side of the coin, parents are increasingly isolated and stressed working longer hours due to the uncertainty of their future work pipeline. In the past they had social contact with their colleagues and a sense of community around their employer. Now this no longer is the case, the school community is becoming the primary ‘tribe’ parents are part of, where they will seek friendship, advice online and offline. We will see flagship schools harness parent time and talent for a range of activities:traditional areas such as helping with reading; to offering work experience and specialist expertise in marketing and fundraising. Core to achieving this are applications that match parent interest and skills with gaps schools wish to fill and make it easy for parents to volunteer.

5. More Apps focus on human connection and experiences

Savvy school leaders in 2020 will encourage parents to connect offline and online. Enhancing prospects for parents to network and sponsor school events at one end of the spectrum to increasing event attendance. We will see more Apps that bridge the digital and physical worlds at the same time respecting personal privacy. In 2019 the average value of event tickets processed per school on Classlist was over ￡2,000. This should be the minimum benchmark for 2020. Substantial time savings doing the admin for events mean schools should expect event organisers (usually the PTA) to be motivated to organise more events and therefore raise more funds for their school than previous years.

6. Privacy laws

GDPR is just the beginning of stricter privacy laws, that will extend to new geographies. 1st January 2020 California introduced a new privacy law for the first time. Parents are more aware of the value of their personal data and more concerned about how their children’s data is handled. Greater accountability will be demanded of companies. We will see further alternatives to the major social networks emerging as their reputations underwent severe damage in 2019.

7. Democratisation of data

The education system places enormous pressure on educational leaders to track and improve pupil academic outcomes. The new OFSTED framework expects heads to be accountable for engaging parents and other stakeholders.

In future we can expect much more emphasis on education leaders reporting back on the ROI of technology investment. Plus using data sourced from beyond their own school. Benchmarks for community health and social impact for instance.

In 2020 educational leaders will be using analytical tools that track a wider set of goals beyond academic results for pupils. Within the school these may relate to social emotional learning (SEL) and be disseminated to a wider group of stakeholders: other parts of government, law enforcement agencies, parents, and governors.

8. Automation

The Government’s strategic framework for education highlights the need to reduce teacher administration. We would like to expand this goal to include the extent of administration burdened on to parents by schools. Repetitive administrative tasks for both parties can be reduced by use of algorithms. Examples:

• Matching of lost and found items for instance would save hours a month for primary school teachers alone.
• Automatic fines for late pickup would allow teachers to get home on time.
• School supply wish lists compiled by teachers and fulfilled by parents at the beginning of the school year.
• School run ride shares*
• Voice technology for sending reminders
• Event ticketing*
• Volunteer signups*
• Parents able to message each other securely with party invitations and class messages reduces teacher time spent passing these on*

Susan Burton

Classlist — powering school communities everywhere

*Classlist’s free platform helps schools to power their communities, including analysing community performance and automation of administrative tasks such as management of lost property, school run sharing, event management and volunteer signups.