Safe websites for schools taking off

Brent Thurrell, of Monk Fryston, felt disconnected from his family life while working abroad for an American software company, when he came up with the idea for a secure network for parents to interact with schools.

He said: “I was travelling all over Europe and I felt left out of what was going on at my little boy’s school.”

He asked if the school could set up a Facebook page to allow him to know what was going on, but because of the security issues surrounding social media, that was not possible.

Coming from an information security background, he used his contacts to build the first system, which was adopted by Monk Fryston Primary School, where he now has two children, Joshua six, and Madeleine, who’s five.

Brent then realised he could roll out the platform and targeted a number of other local schools. By April 2011, with a number of local examples of best practice, Brent went full time on his business, called Scholabo, and is now expanding it nationally.

The system allows parents to follow individual teachers, classes and out- of-school groups of interest to their children. The school can share wall posts, with updates and reminders, reducing the amount of paper it needs to use sending home letters.

It can also be used to share documents, event details, timetables, photo galleries and homework assessments and learning links, and has been adapted so parents can use it on their mobile phones too.

Brent said: “We have got 44 schools in North Yorkshire alone, about six schools in Leeds now and a handful in Doncaster and the East Riding and it is starting to penetrate into the rest of the UK.

“In total we have got about 60 schools nationwide and we’re really trying to ramp it up.”

“It offers a financial and environmental saving as the standard school uses 60,000 sheets of paper per year, equivalent of a tonne of carbon,” he said.