After school programs provide a bridge between the school day and the time parents get off work. They can also give students a chance to experience new activities or be with friends in a safe space. However, maintaining attendance rates can be a challenge; by the time students reach middle school and high school, they are more independent and able to skip out on activities that are not part of the mandated school day.
Let’s look at five tips that can keep your program engaging for your core demographic, easy for parents, and efficient for you and your staff. With these in place, your attendance rates will soar.
Actively Seek Improvement
Before you can improve, you need a baseline. As you start your improvement projects, you need to determine if they are doing as well as you expect. Perform an analysis of your program’s success on a regular basis.
One of the best metrics to tell you how well your program is succeeding is attendance rates. If your rates are high, you must be doing something right; the kids want to be there. If your rates are low, you need to discover why.
Studies have been performed that show a correlation between student behavior and after school programs in the form of improved:
- Persistence
- Engagement in learning
- Social behavior
- Work habits
Automated attendance software easily provides a record of attendance numbers broken out by day, week, or month. You can compare those rates against the schedule of activities offered during that time to pinpoint which activities attracted students and which ones were of no interest.
Easy Way for Parents and Students to Participate
Parents and students are highly connected online. Both want to be able to share accomplishments and activities with others. Have open houses and other events that let parents get the feel of the program and how their children feel about it.
Increase participation by recruiting students in pairs or groups. Most kids want to be with their friends and prefer to avoid activities where they don’t know anyone. By the simple virtue of friendship, you can increase participation and attendance.
Many childcare management software solutions provide online space for parents and staff to share photos, images, and notes about everything that goes on in the program.
Outreach
The direct approach tends to be the best in generating interest. You will get more mileage out of a phone call or meeting than with posters and flyers. Anytime you can use interactive media instead of static pictures and text; you will have an easier time getting everyone interested because they feel included from the outset.
Part of your outreach should focus on building partnerships.
- Partner with the student’s family to maintain the momentum of learning and social behavior.
- Partner with the school district and facilities to ensure you provide compatible activities that match the curriculum.
- Partner with the surrounding communities so everyone is aware of your program and keep you in the neighborhood loop.
Develop a website linked to the school website or request a section of the school site to post information about your program and share images and information with visitors who may be considering the school for their children and to provide easily accessed schedules.
Match Activities to the Needs of the Students
The Harvard Family Research Project did a study that showed students get the most benefit from programs that match their particular interests, schedules, and needs.
Elementary students and their parents typically require a program five afternoons a week. In the upper grades, however, students become busy with other extracurricular activities and may not be able to participate every afternoon. In the latter case, drop in programs with single day activities or an activity scheduled for the same day each week may encourage participation better than a week long program.
If you can find fun ways to use what the kids are learning in school, you can reinforce lessons without making your after school program “just more school.” Make sure to provide some down time as well, to allow everyone to unwind before jumping back in.
Software solutions can provide an easy way for students and their parents to register for specific activities and peruse an online calendar to see what’s coming up.
Automate with Afterschool Software
Throughout this post, we have pointed out areas where a childcare management software solution can make these tips more effective and efficient. This type of software provides other applications that can make running your after school program less administrative.
- Automate the billing process. Allow parents to access their invoices and pay their bills online through a parent portal.
- Automate payment processing. Provide multiple methods of payment and synchronize it to your after school program’s account. You won’t need to hand out invoices that could get lost, mail them and pay for postage, or otherwise do any extra work beyond telling your software to perform the billing procedure.
- Automate email so you can send important messages directly to parents.
- Provide a parent portal where they can access forms, provide updated information and records, and see everything their kids are doing in the program.
The less paper you have to push, the more time you have to spend with the kids and to plan new activities.
Your after school program performs an important function in the lives of the kids who come to you. For many low-income neighborhoods, the after school program provides children a safe haven for a few hours. If they are with you, they are not running in the streets finding trouble.
For the child who struggles academically, the constant presence of people who can help with homework or present a lesson a little differently can make the difference between passing and failing. Children who are behind in social development learn through interactions with others their own age and with older people as well.
To improve the experience and significantly save your resources, childcare management software can automate many tedious tasks and provide easily accessible records storage, information management, and, most importantly, connections to your kids and their parents.
After school programs provide peace of mind for families, opportunities for new experiences for participants, and make learning fun.
