School social media has been terrible at engaging parents

When you work in a primary school, every day is littered with magic moments. You are tripping over them – there are photo opportunities at every turn. From “eureka” flashes in learning to a miraculously quiet dinner queue or some amazing artwork, a walk down the corridors provides an embarrassment of riches for the eager school leader who’s keen to share with the world just how brilliant his or her school is.And in the age of social media, where posting the evidence of an experience is valued almost as highly as the experience itself, many schools are doing just that. Ask a group of senior leaders which social media accounts they use most frequently and they are likely to tell you they’re the ones set up for the school. By linking accounts to smartphones, it has never been easier to snap and post on the daily walk-around and zip those images to followers everywhere.And what’s so very wrong with that? Parents love to see what is going on in school and it’s a great way to get parents more engaged in the life of the school, right?