In recent years, bulk SMS has further increased the capacity of text messaging as a service by allowing us to easily send a large number of SMS messages to the intended recipients and feel confident that these messages are read. The advantages of bulk SMS also apply to schools and universities to develop classroom interaction and also provide the opportunity to create a virtual community for teachers and pupils to communicate, both amongst themselves and with each other.

With the increasing growth and popularity of bulk SMS, it has become one of the most powerful and effective mediums to disseminate information in a matter of seconds. Education systems can implement text messaging in order to send key information to their students and develop their administration, as well as to keep in contact with parents.

Here are a number of examples of how bulk SMS could benefit a school or university:

#1 Send Reminders

Bulk SMS messaging could be used to send out weekly SMS reminders to staff members or perhaps committee members reminding them of duties they must complete or meetings they need to attend. Bulk SMS acts as the perfect tool for this as a large number of people can be notified at once and also the messages can be delivered close to the time of the event or deadline.

#2 Attendance

When a child is absent from school it is often difficult for the school to locate and notify the pupil’s parents or guardians. Bulk SMS would help to make simplify this process through automatic SMS alerts to said parent/guardian’s mobile phone, thus making the process of recording real-time student attendance much easier and less time-consuming. This concept could be developed further by allowing parents to contact the school via a text message if their child is unable to attend one day. If you’re interested in a 2-way SMS service, you’ll most likely need to set up an SMS short code.

#3 Unscheduled Holidays

Unforeseen circumstances can often occur after school or class hours, when students have already left and can no longer be informed about the need for holiday as a result of school closure or class cancellation. For example, if a school were to have a snow day where pupils and teachers were unable to travel to school, bulk SMS would act as the perfect means to communicate this temporary closure with all the staff and parents. Similarly, if a university lecturer were to fall ill, they could notify their students of the cancelled lecture via bulk SMS and feel confident that they’ve opened the message in time, unlike an email which can easily be missed or left in the inbox unopened for days.

#4 Emergencies

In the rare case of an emergency, when contact must be made as quickly as possible due to a matter of particular urgency such as earthquakes, a terrorist attack, hostage scenario, fire, etc. bulk SMS messaging can be used in order to immediately inform parents or relatives of what’s occurring and keep them as in the loop as possible in order to reassure them in times of distress.