Time pressure – so much to do within so little available time. Teaching children, writing reports, cleaning up, engaging parents, engaging your peers and principals – and then there is your own private life to also manage!

So many competing curriculum to take note of – literally every day there is a new teaching approach or a new curriculum that someone wants to sell to you. How do you know what is best? Am I keeping up with the latest developments, or are my children falling behind? This means you have to be a permanent student yourself, reading up all the time on the latest research and developments in Child Care.

Parent pressure. As parents, we all want the best for our children – the best Child Care facility, the best educators, the best ecosystem for them within which to develop – and it absolutely has to be aligned with best practice!

Communication – everyone wants a piece of you! Some days it feels like all you do is communicate – with peers, children, parents, cleaners, maintenance staff, governing bodies, etc., etc. Be this verbally, or via e-mail. And if you are in the “lucky” position to be part of management or administrative staff, then there is still all the other software that you have to update, like invoicing and/or stocktaking packages.

We could go on, but you get the picture. Child Care Centre staff are definitely not in it for only the money! They do this work for the love of it. For the privilege of being involved in raising the next generation – for being involved in getting our children school-ready.

This is their primary outcome.

But somewhere within this new and challenging environment within which Child Care Centres operate, something must give. It just cannot carry on being business as usual. The few points we listed above should make that abundantly clear.

One of the tools at our disposal to make life easier for all stakeholders – educators, parents, principals, administrative staff – is the use of a Child Care Management System with built-in Parent Communication app.

With our team of brilliant developers, we’ve built parent-participation functionality into many of our software’s features, while eliminating most of the frequent communication barriers.

Here are just a few of the ways Xap can help you attract and keep happier, more engaged parents:

1. Keep them up-to-date on Their child’s day
Most parents hate to miss picture-worthy events starring their child, or to forget to dress their kid up on “pyjama day.” Xap’s interactive messaging app is available to parents (via our Xap Smile app).

2. Don’t surprise them with money.
Sure, being the surprise recipient of funds is nice, but the reverse situation (unexpectedly owing money) isn’t. With Xap’s app, parents can easily review their invoice history and keep track of when payments are due (they can also be billed through the app and enjoy payment predictability).

3. Log the moments.
With Xap’s observation logs, educators can provide regular updates on each child’s activities at school – nap time, meals, snacks, etc. Also, parents can be a collaborative part of the experience by adding their own observations (pictures, new learning benchmarks, etc.) of their child at home to the log for centre staff to review.

4. Bring the fun and milestones to life with photos (and video).
With the Xap’s app, it’s never been easier to visually show parents all the fun, developmental adventures their children experience each day through a continuously updated photo roll. Teachers can easily tag each student in photos (parents can only see photos in which their child is tagged for extra safety and security) while also noting learned skills through the shown activity. Parents can then easily save and share their favourite images.

5. Make contact instantly and conveniently.
Within the Xap app, we offer live digital messaging between parents and teachers. Communication is quick, easy and both parents and teachers can enjoy having all shared updates and messages in one convenient place (our app).

6. Demonstrate your commitment to safety and security.
With Xap, parents can rest assured that all of their private financial data is safe and secure.
Whether it’s the director dashboard, the classroom app or the parent app, the Xap system requires authentication for access and attendance and all data is encrypted for top-notch security. Plus, within the parent app, it’s only possible to see content specific to each parent’s child.

While it’s important for parents to be actively involved in their child’s development, we at
Xap recognizes early childhood educators shouldn’t be burdened with time-intensive reporting that takes attention away from the students. That’s why all of the features we’ve shared above are automated or take seconds to utilize.

We want parents to be more engaged and happier while granting teachers the gift of freed-up time to focus on each child. If you’d like to see how Xap can help you attract and retain happy parents, sign up for a free demo by completing the form below.