To App or not to App…communicating with families in childcare and preschool/kindergarten settings

An issue that often comes up on Facebook Group discussions among early childhood educators and directors is what app their service should use to share information with their children’s families. In this article, I argue that service management and educators should spend less time worrying about which app, and more time on working out how an app should be used.

One of the National Quality Standard questions in eQIPd’s standardised parent survey is about measuring families’ satisfaction with how their child’s learning and progress is reported. (This relates to Element 1.3.3 - Families are informed about the program and their child's progress.) It is a question that services consistently perform less well in relative to other quality elements in the standard survey.

In this article, we look at the comments parents make about their child’s education and care service in relation to reporting on children’s learning and progress. The article draws on comments from 34 preschools/kindergartens and 48 long day care services from 2019-2020 which use eQIPd’s standardised parent surveys. Any identifying information has been removed from quotes.

We will unpack some themes which might help your team reflect on how your service communicates with families about children’s learning and progress.

The first theme to emerge is that families want their child’s service to use an app for communicating with families. While no particular app came out as better than any other, families value apps for providing snapshots about their child’s day, as well as a way to communicate about activities or special days at the service.

The following quotes came from a question asking families for about suggestions for improving the service:

Streamlining of communications/paperwork - maybe use one of the daycare apps?

Better communication with parents, regarding how the child’s day was etc. I would prefer an app or similar to see a photo or two or notes about my child’s day.

I know that the other kindergarten up the road offers an App so you can see what your child has done daily. It has a little spiel and photos of what your child did that day at Kinder. When my child comes home, I ask her what she did at Kinder and she can't remember. It would be nice for parents like me to access this daily. I know I would have liked it. Just a suggestion for the future.

More snapshots of daily activities, especially for the younger rooms where they can't tell you much about their day. Something simple like an app where photos are loaded up on each day. I would prefer that over a very general email that might tell you things that didn't even affect your child.

Sometimes more reminders on flexibuzz or social media for special class days or activities would be good.

But whatever app your service uses, it is important to use it well, representing all of the children in the group equally:

I think I have just one communique this far this year regarding my child's learning/activity specifically, and out of the weekly reflection just once has my child been mentioned (often feel like I read about the same 10 children week in week out).

The other cautionary tale about sharing updates about children via an app is that it can be like feeding the beast – parents always seem to want more!

I would love to see more photos and information loaded onto the Keptme app in real time. Sleep time and meals eaten would be great to add to a daily report accessible from our phone.

More individualised feedback per day on children. More photos and videos.

But sometimes we need to look a little more deeper at comments like these – while it could be that some educators are truly sparce in sharing updates, could it be that parents say they want more updates but what they really want is more specific information and reassurance about their child and his/her progress? 

Many of the comments throughout the parent surveys indicate that indeed, more specific reporting about their child’s learning and progress is what they want, as the quotes below illustrate:

I’d like more specific feedback on how my child is developing. Once a quarter we get feedback but it doesn’t give me an indication of how my child is progressing compared to benchmarks for age. I’d really like to know what they see strengths and development areas.

More personal contact with how my child is progressing. The info and pictures on Kindy Hub is great, but does not have a lot of detail specific to my child and his progress.

Individual child update and progress maybe short 10 min teacher/parent chat mid year to discuss child’s learning and progress.

More formalised feedback especially as children get older, including areas of development/focus the parents can work on.

The other theme which emerges related to this is that parents often feel uninformed about what their child should be learning and what normal development looks like.

Communication with parents is sometimes lacking. Parents really appreciate hearing how their child is going and want to know how the kinder is running more generally, but sometimes too many assumptions are made about what parents know. I have no knowledge of early childhood learning or the academic concepts behind it.

I would like more information about the activities my child does at childcare, and some insight into the educational value. There has not been much communication to us about the activities the children do and why they do them. My child wants to learn to write, for example, but there does not seem to be any consistent support for him.

There were many comments along the lines of ‘why is my child not learning to read or write’ – of course, teachers should be cultivating an awareness and interest in symbols like letters and numbers when appropriate, but comments like these as above, signals parents can be uninformed about learning in an early years setting should look like.

Themes

To recap, the themes which emerged are:

1.      Parents appreciate having an app to share information about their child’s daily activities and to connect with the service.

2.      Parents always want as much information as they can get about their child’s daily activities – but beware of sharing information on a small sample of children rather than equal representation!

3.      Parents want more specific information about their child’s learning and progress and reassurance as to whether that progress is within expected milestones.

4.      Parents are often uninformed about what is within the normal range for learning and development and about how their education and care service supports that learning.

Questions to reflect:

Does your service have an app and if so, are all educators using it in a consistent way? How do you ensure all children are recorded?

Are educators over-sharing information about daily activities via the app to feed an insatiable beast when their time could better be spent on other things?

How do you assess and report on children’s learning and progress against developmental milestones?

How do you inform and educate parents about early childhood development and the role of early years services like yours to support children's development and learning?