The notice that never left the school bag
Every school has sent one: a printed circular, handed out in the last period, that reaches roughly the number of parents who happen to empty the bag that evening. The follow-up phone calls then cost more staff time than printing it ever did.
Meanwhile every one of those parents already opens an app of yours most mornings, to see where the bus is.
A slideshow on the home screen
A school admin uploads pictures from the dashboard and they slide across the parent app's home screen — admission dates, a sports day poster, a holiday notice, exam timings. Each can carry one short line over it, or none at all when the picture says it by itself.
You choose the order. Anything you do not want showing right now is switched off rather than deleted, because a term's notice tends to come round again next year.
Only your parents, only your pictures
A banner belongs to exactly one school. Parents see the banners of the schools their own children attend and nothing else, and that filter is applied on the server from the account asking — never from anything the app sends. One school cannot put a picture in front of another school's families, or see what they are showing.
Why images are uploaded, not linked
Banners are uploaded and served from our own storage rather than pasted in as a web address. A banner renders inside a parent's app, so an arbitrary host would be rendering there too — and a link that breaks or changes later would break or change on every parent's phone at once.
Getting the most out of it
A few habits separate a slideshow parents read from one they swipe past.
- One message per banner. A poster carrying four notices gets read as none.
- Design for a phone: big type, high contrast, the key line in the top half.
- Keep three to five live at a time, ordered with the most urgent first.
- Switch a banner off the day it expires — a stale notice teaches parents to ignore the strip.
Frequently asked questions
Who can add or remove banners?
School admins, from the school dashboard. Every banner records who created it, and it is visible only to that school's own parents.
How many banners can a school show?
There is no hard limit, but three to five works best. Anything you are not showing now can be switched off and kept for later rather than deleted.
Do parents get a notification for a new banner?
No — banners are for standing notices, not alerts. Time-critical messages such as boarding, delay and SOS go out as notifications, so the two never compete for attention.
What size should the image be?
A wide image, roughly 16:9, with the important text in the upper half. Anything narrower gets letterboxed on the home screen.
