I was educated in the 1990s, first at a country prep school and then at Eton, and have a clear memory of how my schools communicated with my parents. Basically, they didn’t. They received a letter before the start of each term and some written reports at the end and that was it. If Eton sent your parents a letter in the middle of term it almost certainly meant you had suffered a mortal injury or been expelled. What Eton did do was publish a small pale-green pocket almanac called Fixtures which listed every sporting match in the calendar but also contained essential information such as the courtesy titles of any sons of dukes at the school and the colours of the 4th XV.
Like many people, no doubt, I was under the misapprehension that the expression ‘children should be seen and not heard’ was coined by the Victorians. In fact, it has been in currency since the 15th century. Be that as it may, a Victorian parent observing a group of children in 2026 would surely be delighted to note how little noise emanated from them. Unfortunately, as a 21st-century parent will know, that is almost certainly because they have been struck dumb by their devices and not because they have learned to keep quiet in adult company.
There is a certain irony that just as children have never been quieter, schools have never been noisier. The two eldest of my three boys attend a London state primary and it is no exaggeration to say that I receive more communications from the school than I do from my mother, and she is by no means a distant parent. Friends and family tell me that this is not an exceptional experience.
My children’s school enjoins parents to use an app called Parent Hub, which describes itself as: ‘An app, SMS and email messaging system that helps you have better communication with parents. It enables you to reach every parent instantly, and be confident that you have. Schools use it to simplify their communication strategy, go paperless and transform their whole approach to empowering parents with the information and updates that matter most to them.’
‘Better’ is in reality a synonym for ‘more’. What’s interesting about that blurb is the extent to which it extols the app’s benefits to schools – and there is no doubt that, from a school’s perspective, it is an absolute boon. In contrast with the analogue age, there’s no photocopying and no stamps. It doesn’t require the tiresome administration of collating email addresses. It also enables the school to fend off any potential complaints about important dates or announcements being missed.
There are many similar apps, which are free for parents to download. If parents are in the position of having different children at different schools then they will probably have to download an app for each school and in the process watch a daily flurry of notifications become an avalanche. Most of the apps have a function which will automatically send an email for every missed notification so that recalcitrant parents who fail to log in every day get chivvied by the digital nanny. Some of the apps will even translate notifications for parents who speak little or no English.
Dependence on the apps for communication does seem to be hard cheese for the admittedly small minority of parents who do not have or want to have smart devices and obviously parents could simply choose not to download the app at all. While such a refusenik stance might bring blessed peace, it does run the risk of missing an essential communication, such as learning that the school is unexpectedly closed for the day.
I receive more communications from the school than I do from my mother and she is not a distant parent
Something that renders the communication situation potentially overwhelming is that this is just school-to-parent communication. Parent-to-parent communication is where the notifications can really get out of hand. I struggle to believe that there is a primary class in the land that does not have a WhatsApp group for parents, sometimes the whole school, sometimes for a whole year, sometimes for every class.
Again, this can at times be a useful conduit for information but it has also supplanted face-to-face communication at the school gates to the extent that the digital school gates are now to be found next to your desk at work, at the end of your sofa, on the bus and even on holiday. And there is something quietly exasperating about seeing yet another message asking what the homework is for that week when the school’s own app has just sent you a chaser email with all the requisite information.
Any head teacher with their head screwed on properly knows that there should be an absolute prohibition on teaching staff joining parents’ WhatsApp groups. The reason for this betrays what is perhaps the chief flaw in this river of information in which modern school parents are forced to swim. In the main it all flows one way. When parents want to communicate with the school, that requires time, energy and focus on the school’s part. By directing a digital deluge of notifications and information at them via the app, I do wonder whether schools hope that might deter parents from seeking to communicate with them.
When children are too young to be reliable messengers, it is only reasonable to expect that schools will choose to communicate with parents in the cheapest and most efficient way they can. But there is a risk that speed and ease mean quality is superseded by quantity. There is such a thing as too much information. Let’s not forget another cherished Victorian maxim: silence is golden.
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