Sooner than the report card
Median gap between a teacher releasing a result and the date the same result would have reached a parent under the previous termly report cycle.
A school of about 1,400 families
The parents who stopped waiting
Twice a year, ten minutes, and a number nobody could act on. The change was not more communication — it was one notification that said something.
11 days sooner than the report card
+74% practice sets completed
1 alert per paper, not per day
78% log in within a week
Results on release, not at the parents’ evening
What they were doing,
What they were doing,
and what replaced it.
about 1,400 families · Standards 4–9. Measured across two terms, against the same school’s prior year.
Before
Results held back until a parents’ evening, then delivered as a percentage in a ten-minute slot with thirty families waiting outside.
After
One notification per released paper, with the two chapters that cost the most marks — and a conversation at home about Chapter 7.
“We were not withholding results. We just had no way of sending one that meant anything, so we saved them all up for a ten-minute slot.”
Deputy head
How it actually went
Five moments,
Five moments,
in the order they happened.
Not a plan — what they did, including the parts that were not the plan. Pick a moment.
Term 1
One standard, opt-in
Standard 6 only, and parents had to opt in. About a third did. The school expected complaints about surveillance and got questions about the marking instead.
- One standard, opt-in
- A third joined
- Marking questions, not privacy ones
Wk 3
One notification per paper
The design decision the whole thing rests on. Not when a paper is set, not when it is sat, not when marking begins — once, when a teacher releases a result.
- One alert, on release
- Everything else off by default
- Nothing a child would call spying
Wk 6
Plain language
The first version used the same wording as the teacher view and parents found it opaque. It was rewritten to say “lost eleven marks on Motion” rather than anything with a percentile in it.
- Rewritten after feedback
- No percentiles, no jargon
- Strong chapters named too
Term 2
All standards
Standards 4 to 9, opt-out rather than opt-in. Uptake went to 78% within a week of the first release, which is the number the school considers the real result.
- Opt-out, not opt-in
- 78% within a week
- 1,400 families
End
Eleven days
Results reaching parents eleven days sooner than the report card did, and practice completion up 74% — because a parent who knows which chapter slipped can actually help.
- 11 days sooner
- +74% practice completed
- One alert per paper, still
How each figure was measured
Four numbers,
Four numbers,
and where each came from.
Measured across two terms, against the same school’s prior year. A figure without a method is a figure you cannot check, so each one says what it counted and what it did not.
Practice sets completed
Completion rate for practice issued to students whose parents had linked accounts, against students in the same divisions whose parents had not. The school ran this comparison; we did not.
Per paper, not per day
The default notification rate. Practice, attendance and trend alerts are all off unless a parent turns them on; about 12% did.
Log in within a week
Parents opening the app at least once in the week after a result was released, across two terms.
What it cost
What got worse
What got worse
before it got better.
Every rollout has one, and a case study without it is marketing. These are theirs, in their own account.
The first wording did not workParents found it opaque
The initial parent view reused the teacher’s wording, including terms like rubric and weighted mean. Parents said politely that they could not read it. It was rewritten from scratch in plain language six weeks in, and the school considers that six weeks wasted.
The comparison group is imperfectAnd the school says so
The +74% compares students whose parents linked accounts to students whose parents did not. Parents who opt in are probably more engaged to begin with, which almost certainly inflates the figure. The school reports it anyway because it is the comparison they actually have, with that caveat attached.
A small number of families found it too muchEven at one alert per paper
About 4% turned notifications off entirely while keeping access to the app. The school treats that as the system working: a parent who wants to look rather than be told should be able to. It is also the reason nothing here is mandatory.
If any of that would be a problem where you are, it is worth raising on the first call rather than in the second term.
Two more
Other schools,
Other schools,
other numbers.
All six are measured the same way. See all six
Questions
What schools ask
What schools ask
about this one.
The ones that come up almost every time.
Than the printed report card that same school issued the previous year. It is measured against their own process, not against an industry average.
Because it counts any parent who opened a result once, and a school with 1,400 families will always have parents who look once and never again. Their head of school said so on the call and we kept it in.
More in the first fortnight, fewer after. Parents who had never seen a chapter breakdown had questions about it; once the format was familiar the calls dropped below where they had been.
Ready when you are
Bring us last term’s results.
Book a free 30-minute demo. We’ll build the same breakdown from a paper you already ran, so the first number you see is your own.