The Parent-School Communication Gap: SEP ERP will rebuild structured trust.
Walk into any school office during visiting hours, and you’ll likely hear the same stories. Parents complaining about not getting timely circulars. Teachers saying they already sent the message on WhatsApp. Principals stuck between frustrated parents and equally frustrated staff.
Communication is supposed to build trust. Instead, in many schools, it becomes the source of mistrust. Parents feel left out, teachers feel blamed, and principals feel caught in the middle.
Why This Happens
- WhatsApp dependency: Parents miss messages in endless groups, or complain of receiving them too late.
- Paper circulars: Often lost in schoolbags, sometimes never reaching home.
- Unstructured updates: Different staff members send messages in different formats, creating confusion.
- One-way flow: Parents are told, but rarely listened to — their feedback is scattered and ignored.
Instead of strengthening relationships, communication becomes a battlefield.
What Schools Usually Try (But Doesn’t Work)
- More WhatsApp groups: Which only add noise, not clarity.
- Parent apps: Downloaded but rarely used, because they feel like one more burden.
- Reminders through children: Highly unreliable and unfair to the child.
- Occasional feedback forms: Collected but never acted upon.
These efforts treat symptoms, not the root cause. Parents want clarity and consistency, not chaos in a new shape.
How the School Excellence Program (SEP ERP) Bridges the Gap
The School Excellence Program (SEP ERP) is being built with the idea that communication is the lifeline of trust between schools and parents.
- Role-Based Messaging: Circulars go only to the relevant audience — staff, students, or parents — no unnecessary noise.
- Structured Templates: Every message follows a standard format, so parents know what to expect.
- Feedback Channels: Parent responses are captured, logged, and visible in reports — not lost in inboxes.
- Multi-Channel Delivery: Whether email, Whatsapp, or app notification, parents never miss important updates.
- Principal Oversight: Every communication is tracked, so accountability is built in.
With SEP ERP, parents no longer say “We didn’t know”. Schools no longer say “We already sent it”. Both see the same structured truth.
Looking Ahead
The communication gap has silently eroded trust in schools for years. Parents may forgive academic pressure, but they rarely forgive being kept in the dark.
The School Excellence Program is preparing schools to end this cycle of blame by building a transparent bridge of communication.
In our next insight, we will explore another common frustration in every school calendar: annual planning — why schools never stick to it, and how SEP ERP will finally enforce discipline in systems.
Soumitra Singh Thakur