Introducing the new app for Parents & Families!

The Orah For Families app provides parents, guardians and other trusted contacts with an easy way to manage all aspects of their student's life - passes, events, and forms from one easy-to-use place.

Recently launched in the app stores, this new, fully native mobile app complements the existing web app that parents & guardians have been using to date.

With the feedback and requests we have received over the past few years, we know that parents want an app to communicate with schools, understand if they are responsible for any tasks, e-sign important forms, and keep up to date with their student's schedules.

We have run in-depth interviews with parents from 40+ countries, and they have all told us a lot about their challenges with how they currently communicate/interact with schools. 

Logging into poorly built apps, using multiple apps to check, understand and keep up to date with what is going on, and missing out on key details are common frustrations with parents.

With a wave of younger, tech-savvy parents coming through, schools are facing increasing pressure to keep up with these demands, and we are delighted to announce the first version of Orah For Families. 

Parents can download the app from the app store and use their existing log in to get started right away.

Once a parent has logged in, without any setup or configuration on their part, they will have three key workflows immediately available to them:

Passes

Passes are used any time a student goes off the regular school schedule. Off-campus leave, class absences, sign-outs during the school day or trips - the list goes on. 

Parents are sometimes required to approve or initiate these passes: we have made it super simple to do this directly in the app. Just select the pass type, fill in the details and click submit!

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Forms

Forms are a fast and easy way to capture information from parents or guardians. As they are customizable, we have seen schools use them in a variety of ways:

• Permissions: Keep track of what students can/cannot do, such as driving their cars to campus or leaving during the school day.

• Medical information: Maintain up-to-date student medical information through forms that can be completed if there are important changes to their child's details. This information can also sync with the Student Information System to ensure no double-data entry.

• COVID / illness symptom tracking: Hopefully a thing of the past now! However, we still see these forms used for parents, students, and staff so schools can keep on top of it or for compliance reasons.

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Events

Busy parents need to give permission for activities/events that the school is running and this is often a nightmare to get on time. Through the Orah For Families app, parents are notified to approve or decline any events their students are invited to. 

We see these often used for activities in boarding houses, regular field trips, and sometimes events held on the school grounds like a large sporting event or activity (like the ball/prom).

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Other amazing benefits

Aside from the workflows a parent can operate from the app, there are other amazing benefits for parents and schools:

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• Siblings in one app: Students across multiple schools can be linked to and organized in the one app (if both schools use Orah).

• Calendar/schedule: Students passes, events & activities can be viewed directly from the home screen - this along with extracurricular activities can be seen all in one place.

• Push notifications (coming soon): Parents or guardians can be notified whenever there is anything they need to review or complete in the app.

The team behind Orah For Families are still hard at work adding new features so please let us know if you have any ideas for us.

If you want to check out the new Families app for yourself or for your families at school, click on the Apple or Google store links to download the app directly to your phone.