Enjoy a more positive relationship with parents, and better involvement in their children’s learning and praise.
Nov 2020
Hello! My name is Lucy Coy and I am a co-host of HeadteacherChat. I am delighted to have been given access MarvellousMe to see what they have on offer to support schools. I thought you would be interested to know what I discovered! Read the full review below . . .
How does MarvellousMe describe their products?
MarvellousMe: Inspire, involve and empower parents.
‘MarvellousMe is a game-changer for parent engagement.’ It engages parents by telling them about their children’s learning and success. It enriches family conversations about school and makes it easy for parents to help their children’s education and say: ‘Well done!’
Delivering a positive teacher-parent partnership, MarvellousMe makes it easy for schools to implement the best practice prescribed by the Education Endowment Foundation. To build and sustain excellent parent engagement and positive behaviour school-wide.
In summary….
MarvellousMe is the perfect way to engage and involve parents and carers, without adding to teachers’ workload or risking their well-being.
MarvellousMe makes it easy to give parents positive and personal news more regularly, inspiring even the hardest-to-reach families.
MarvellousMe makes it easy to send learning-led and praise-led notes to parents, sparking exciting family conversations about school and involving them in their child’s school day.
MarvellousMe digitizes your rewards and values and any house points system, supercharges it with parent-pride and reinforcement, and gives children and parents a wonderful keepsake.
What does the team at HeadteacherChat think?
Designed by a once disengaged dad, MarvellousMe is different from normal school messaging systems and social media. It is used to build a positive teacher-to-parent partnership, and equips parents with the progress-led news that they need to support their child’s learning at home and reinforce the schools values and positive behaviours.
A big win for MarvellousMe is that it makes children and parents smile and feel proud, compared to the sense of anxiety parent normally feel when they receive a text sent from the school office. The average parent engagement rate is over 90%, driven because, as we know, children love their parents hearing good news, so there’s lots of ‘home pester power’ for families to use it.
MarvellousMe is effortless and quick for teachers, a perfect plenary aid, and gives leaders the ability to focus parent engagement on essential topics (including the new HRE requirements), analytics to ensure whole school consistency, and peace-of-mind that data is managed centrally and securely and hosted in the UK.
Teachers can even use it to send home learning exercises, images and videos, and track which parents have completed activities with their children. It’s a simple way to replace reading diaries and spelling books, and link parents to useful online resources and portals like Time Tables Rock Stars, and Oxford Owl.
We looked at MarvellousMe and these are our thoughts:
- We love the fact that MarvellousMe is built around giving parents exciting and positive news that is specifically linked to their children progress. Plus the capability for teachers to send home learning exercises and track who’s done them.
- It is easy to customise MarvellousMe badges for your school’s values, learning powers and rewards, so you can really involve parents in them and inspire that vital home reinforcement.
- It is easy to track badges and message-types through scorecards, dashboards and downloadable sheets, making House point tallying simple, and delivering impact reports on special cohorts like Pupil Premium children.
- We like the fact that MarvellousMe protects teacher workload and wellbeing from unnecessary replies and out of hour contact.
- We love the different ways that MarvellousMe drives effective parent engagement through every class, giving leaders everything they need to ensure whole school impact.
How will this be of benefit to schools?
MarvellousMe is ideal for schools who want to give parents more positive news, engage separated and wider family members, and to regularly want to involve parents in their child’s learning and values-led programmes.
It’s an excellent rewards and praise system too, with parent pride and home re-enforcement built at its heart. It informs parents of their child’s success in real-time, gives families a collection of their child’s badges (and positive teacher comments) for the whole time at primary school, and gives them a gorgeous keepsake MemoryBook. It also reduces school administration, by auto-tallying house points and delivers handy scorecards to ensure inclusiveness and consistency.
Lastly, if your school is spending lots of money on texts and paper, MarvellousMe will save you time and money. The office can use it to send messages, reminders, newsletter and forms, link it to any booking or payment system, and award badges for great attendance, achievements and even lost teeth!
If your school wants to improve parent engagement, modernise its postcard or stickers system, and save time and reduce costs along the way, MarvellousMe could be your perfect answer.
“If you’re struggling to engage with parents due to social distancing, MarvellousMe is a great way to break down barriers and keep in touch with parents daily. It’s a quick and easy way to virtually bring parents into school life, in a safe and socially distanced way.”
Headteacher, Heronswood Primary School
Verdict:
✓ We like the fact it was built by a dad for parents.
✓ Don’t compare MarvellousMe to the run-of-the-mill school messaging systems. It’s all about positivity and really involving parents where it matters most.
✓ We like the fact that it can work along-side other communications systems, especially to modernise your rewards and values programme.
✓ We love the fact that separated parents, grandparents and carers can all join up to celebrate their child’s achievements. It’s so quick and easy.
✓We like the fact it protects teacher workload and well-being and gives leader full control and impact evidence.
✓ We love that it’s a UK business, with data hosted in the UK, and backed up by real people you can talk with for any help or tips.
✓ Excellent value for money.
“The process of implementing MarvellousMe was straightforward, the support was brilliant, and within two weeks, we had 99% of parents engaged, which is wonderful. The parents love the app, they enjoy seeing the rewards badges coming in and can have meaningful conversations with their children about the school day and what they like most is that the notification comes straight to their phone.”
Lucy Coy, HeadteacherChat
Review by: HeadteacherChat www.headteacherchat.com
