Sending communications to parents and groups of pupils via SchoolPost

SchoolPost is now the preferred method of communication with Parents and, potentially,

groups of pupils.

SchoolPost is designed to facilitate:

•  Group publications into a single notification for parents (Head’s Letter) - all SchoolPost 

content MUST be submitted by 5.00pm on Thursday (for mailing the following day)

•  Targeted communications to a class, year, group of pupils, their parents or both

SchoolPost is not intended for:

•  One-to-One communication, emails typically used in this case,

•  Inter class communication about a subject can also be done via MS Teams through your preset 

groups

Key changes:

Messages on Firefly now redirect you to SchoolPost, to avoid confusion of where and how messages 

are sent.

Accessing SchoolPost:

SchoolPost can be accessed via Firefly, either clicking on Messages or via the Quick Links.

A user guide is available via the question mark symbol in the top right hand corner of the screen.

Example Publication – submitting a simple publication to the Lower Sixth.

1. Open Firefly, and click on the Messages icon.

2. Select Staff area

3. Select New Publication

4. Date and Time for sending messages: By default the next available timeslot will be selected 

(Friday 4pm for parent communications), you can override this for ad-hoc or pupil communications.

ATTENTION: if you are not intending to have your message to be part of the Head’s Letter on the 

prefixed Timeslot, then please select Custom Date and pick the date and time to send the message.

5. Recipients: you can select a quick filter (e.g. MHS Sixth Form), at this point the number of 

pupils (350) and the number of contacts (769 “parents of 350 pupils”) will be displayed; you can 

amend the recipient of the message to be “Students, Parents, Parents and Students, etc” and you’ll 

see the numbers updating.

Note: It is also worth adding yourself to the recipient list as this will enable you to see the 

message when it is sent.

6. Further Filtering: You can amend the selection by clicking on Add groups/sets/filter – for the 

above example where MHS Sixth form was selected, Year 12 and Year 13 would be selected.

7. Group Selection: You can experiment with selecting groups and sets (as pupil details are updated 

on iSAMS), for example you can send emails to pupils or parents based on Academic House, Teaching 

Groups, SOSCS fixtures…

8. Composing the message:

•  Title: Add a title for the publication (e.g. Uniform Expectations - Lower School, SLT name and 

role e.g Mr James Dickin, Deputy Head (Pastoral), selecting the reply function if you would like 

parents to be able to respond to you.

•  Body of the Message: Add your text to the body of the communication.

Note: You can copy and paste from another document, but when pasting select ‘paste as plain text’

•  Attachments: You can include an attachment where necessary - drag and drop to add an attachment 

(for text only use the text box; sometimes an attachment is needed eg a newsletter, please use a 

PDF).

•  Viewing the message: You can view the message by clicking “View email” or you can send a sample 

email to yourself by clicking on “Test email”, this will give you a feel of how the email/message will look like when it is sent. This won’t send an email to the 

selected group yet.

•  Once completed, select an approver, and click Request Approval.

•  ATTENTION: Messages to parents must be approved by a communication coordinator (please refer to 

the communication guide), to ensure sending high quality and validated emails to parents.

9. Approving a publication:

•  The approver will now receive a request to approve the publication. If they select Publish then 

the communication will be collated and sent-out in the scheduled timeslot.

In the example above, we detailed the steps that could be taken to send a “Uniform Standards - Lower School” communication. Note that this communication would only be sent to parents who have a child in the lower school, likewise a separate publication could be created for parents who have pupils in the sixth form. The general aim should be to use SchoolPost to target relevant communication to parents.