In school at the moment I am in the process of organising 3 different trips. A trip to Flame Congress next weekend, a Yr 10 Retreat to St Vincent’s Whitstable, and a trip to see the NFL Game at Wembley Stadium in October.
This year the school has become a “cash-less” school will all payments in school made through a form of electronic payment. There have been a few teething problems in getting the system sorted and easily applicable to all payment to the school, but I think it is fully up and running at the moment. The school is also a “paper-less” school when it comes to letters to parents with all communication being carried out via an email/online system. The overall system has some positives and negatives:
The trip to the Flame Congress has proved to be one with positives and negatives. As it is a new event the desription is hard to convey through a simple letter and I know many parents assumed that their pupils would not be interested and did not tell them about the trip. Each pupil who was spoken to in person has shown a great enthusiasm to attend but at least half of those are “still waiting for their parents” to pay via the payment system. It will be a wonderful day, but it has taken a lot of verbal chasing and reminding to get the numbers required. It has also meant that the payments and sign ups have been dealt with centrally so I don’t have to worry about pupils handing me forms and payments at all times of day.
In contrast the Yr 10 Retreat to the SCYS at St Vincent’s , Whitstable; and the NFL Game at Wembley Stadium are proving very popular. Both of these events have happened over 4 times before, and the word of mouth from pupils has been enough for the sign up by pupils to be really good. I expect both to be sold out this week.
I am still learning the best ways round the systems – but the lesson seems to be that new events will need more of a push and if the overall demand is there amongst the pupils the system is not used as an excuse at all.
Neil D'Aguiar.com 