Skool Loop

What is Skool Loop app?                                            

Children are not great postal operatives. Yet, schools have sent crucial information home for decades in the dubious safety of pockets and school bags. Parents have unpeeled these messages, crumpled and dirty, or sometimes post washing-machine cycle, to find that they are late responding. 

It is amazing how well schools have maintained home/teacher communication using this teacher parent communication tool.

Fortunately, modern technology has allowed schools to take the burden of message delivery from kids and build in better administration too. Skool Loop harnesses the prevalence of mobile devices to make cross-school community communication easy and safe. 

Schools using the Skool Loop service can get messages to and from parents easily and quickly.

What we love about Skool Loop app.

Let’s start with the big one—Skool Loop is entirely free to schools and parents! There’s more about how the app is funded in a later section of this review, so make sure you read that. However, having such a functional and helpful app that you can adopt without budget considerations makes Skool Loop worth a closer look.

Next, the feature set ticks all of the boxes for a home/school communication app but doesn’t overdo it. Every new feature or option added is another thing for users to learn. Apps used by broad communities have to balance features against complexity. If schools want parents to use a communication app, it must be approachable, and Skool Loop is.

There is a lot to like about a free app that does its stated role well. You may have an existing communication app or a shortlist to try, but examining Skool Loop further won’t be wasted time.

Looking closer is straightforward as the app’s online demo is fully interactive and perfectly reflects the user experience.   Combine using the demo with this review to learn everything you need about Skool Loop.

What services does Skool Loop provide?

Skool Loop absorbs schools’ communication into its toolset.

There are school-to-parent tools for keeping parents informed. A school calendar makes dates and events easy to track, instant notices push urgent messages to the school community, and newsletters engage and update parents.

Then there are two-way tools. Schools can issue permission slips, and parents complete and return them within the app, parent/teacher interviews can be arranged and administered in the app, and absences can be notified and explained.

The tools are flexible enough that you should be able to fit each one easily into your school’s preferred approach.

What age is it appropriate for?

Schools and Parents are the intended users of Skool Loop’s service. The communication and organisation tools it provides are relevant to schools that cater for all ages.

Is Skool Loop app easy to use?

Skool Loop’s app uses a tile-based menu which makes it easy to navigate on the phone, which is likely the way it will be primarily used. Each tool has enough features to make them useful and flexible but not so many to make them overly complex with little-used options.

How will students benefit?

Opening up a direct communication channel between parents and teachers makes things better for kids. They don’t risk losing important permission slips or missing out on activities because they forgot to return them. 

How will teachers benefit?

Tracking, carrying, and storing slips of paper has always been a pain for teachers already hauling folders, books, and lesson plans around. The communication enabled by Skool Loop is great for keeping things flowing, but having it already in digital form also cuts down on teachers’ admin and lets multiple staff track the same information.

How will parents benefit?

Parents want simplicity. They want a single source of school information, whether that is general notices or specifically about their child. They don’t want to juggle slips of paper or determine whether they need to access a school website or phone the office to find something out.

Skool Loop provides this simplicity by doing its job superbly, and parents will appreciate not having to create an account or enter their personal details. Too much information can drown out what is relevant, so parents will like being able to subscribe to groups relevant to their child so that they only get the notifications that matter to them.

The app links with personal calendars so that essential dates are conveniently at hand.

What can Skool Loop app improve on?

Inevitably, as apps move on from their home market, there can be differences in commonly used terms. For example, Skool Loop has an interview section for arranging face-to-face appointments between parents and teachers. 

While some localities will understand this section for what it is, others would expect this feature to come under a different name, such as ‘meetings’. In these areas, ‘interviews’ is more likely to bring to mind a section for job seekers. An option to update section titles to what is most understandable to each locality would avoid some confusion during the app’s onboarding process.

Other communication apps also allow web access which can be a useful feature for many families. It opens up the number of devices a family has on which they can use the communications and allows other accessibility tools that some parents might rely on. Skool Loop requires parents to have access to an Android or iOS device.

One point that needs to be emphasised is that Skool Loop is a communication tool. It does not claim to be anything else and fulfils this role well. However, potential purchasers must remember that it is not part of a more extensive administration or school records system. Ensure that you appraise Skool Loop by what it is and not what it is not.

How much does Skool Loop app cost?

Skool Loop has adopted an innovative business model that schools should carefully consider. 

The service is ad-supported, but before you reject it on that basis, you should weigh up the pros and cons of Skool Loop’s implementation.

Skool Loop does not use ad networks—inappropriate rogue ads cannot slip through.

Skool Loop takes advertisements from local companies whose products are likely relevant to parents and schools. 

Skool Loops ads are not obnoxious in their on-screen dominance and do not force users to engage with them for a minimum time.

Skool Loop is entirely free to parents and schools—a big plus in this time of economic uncertainty.

The ad implementation seen during this review of Skool Loop is advertising done properly. The ones seen were relevant, discrete, and safe, and their existence is what makes the product free to the end-users. Ultimately, your school policies and preferences will inform how suitable this is for you, but, as we say, think carefully about the service’s advantages.

Is Skool Loop app safe to use?

As a communication tool, Skool Loop will inevitably come into contact with school, parent, and child data. The service’s website makes clear and prominent references to its commitment to data security. Data remains the school’s property, and Skool Loop does not access it, pass it on, or sell it to any other company.

Schools have some control over who can access the app through the use of locks.

Overall rating of the app.

Tools employed across a school community deserve careful consideration. Parents do not want to get used to new apps regularly, and it takes school staff a while to embed a service’s tools into their workflow. This makes it important that you consider communication services not just for the present but for the future. 

Ongoing costs are one such consideration. 

Skool Loop’s free price means you don’t have to think about how the service will fit into future budget allocations.

Features and tools are something else you must think about. 

Other communication apps might be more feature-rich or link more deeply with other services, either first or third-party. The question that needs to be answered is whether you need or will use those features.

Skool Loop has taken some of the most common and important communication purposes between schools and homes and made them more convenient. Easy sending and receiving of notices and permissions make organisation easier for parents and teachers, but there is a lot more to school admin than this and Skool Loop does not claim to cover it all.

 If Skool Loop has all the features you need or will use, then why pay for more?   Its online demo lets you know exactly what you’ll be getting and what it offers. Its makers promise it will be free forever.

We certainly think that spending the time to look into this service is well worth it. Skool Loop is an excellent app that will slot easily into your school community’s toolset and become something everyone relies upon.

Try Skool Loop’s demo and find out if this five-star app will open up the lines of communication in your school.

You can download Skool Loop on your iOS or Android devices from the app stores. Download the Skool Loop app from the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store.