Faced with a looming second wave, South Australian schools were sent spinning when a 6-day hard lockdown affected the entire state.
After Premier Steven Marshall announced the new restrictions last Wednesday (18 Nov), schools across the state were left with the large task of notifying parents and students of the pending closure at midnight.
MGM helped SA schools communicate effectively
The team at MGM Wireless helped facilitate the lockdown by calling over 75 SA schools and learning centres within 4 hours, providing SMS credits to help schools communicate the shut-down to their community.
On the day of the Premier’s lockdown announcement, over 145K SMS messages were sent out by SA schools though MGM Wireless. All students and parents were notified about the closure and asked to take home school laptops or devices, books and anything they needed to continue their learning from home.
SA schools continued to use MGM Wireless to keep their community updated during the lockdown, with over 90K SMS messages sent out on Friday. A following 106K SMS messages were sent out on Monday when students returned back to school after the lockdown was shortened by 3 days.
Why use SMS in a crisis?
SMS is the most efficient way to communicate during a crisis or emergency. Social media, phone calls, emailing and messaging within the SchoolStar app do not have the same reach as SMS does. Without an effective way to communicate, emergency messages can either become lost or the information is outdated by the time parents see the message.
SMS has a 98% open rate within three minutes, making it the most worthwhile means of communicating.
Emergency SMS notifications are important, but unified communication across all devices and platforms is also needed.
Outreach+ enables schools to communicate to their community with preconfigured emergency templates across multiple platforms. The same message can be delivered across text, email, landline, social media and in the SchoolStar app at the same time. A message on Outreach+ can be sent via any smartphone giving control to the Principal or other school leaders during a crisis.
In an emergency, every moment counts. Thank you to the South Australian schools who chose MGM Wireless to support the facilitation of the lockdown.
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