Ask a PE coordinator what information parents need about school sport, and they’ll list: fixture times, locations, kit requirements, results, consent. Ask parents what they actually want to know, and the list is similar — but the gap between what’s communicated and what’s received is often significant.
This gap isn’t usually about unwillingness to communicate. It’s about assumptions. PE staff assume parents know things they don’t. Parents assume information will come to them without having to seek it out. Both sides end up frustrated.
What parents say they want to know
When you ask parents directly — through surveys, through conversations, through the questions that come into school inboxes — a clear picture emerges of what they actually care about.
Whether their child is involved
The most basic piece of information: is my child selected for this fixture, this club, this event? This sounds obvious, but in many schools the answer reaches parents through their child — which means it arrives late, partially, or not at all. A parent who doesn’t know their child is in the squad can’t arrange pickup, can’t plan to watch, can’t ask how it went.
Parents consistently say they want to hear about selection directly — not via their child, not via another parent, directly. This doesn’t have to be an elaborate communication. A notification saying “Your child has been selected for the U14 netball squad for Saturday’s fixture at St Mary’s” takes thirty seconds to generate and answers the question before it’s asked.
The practical details — specifically
Parents don’t want vague information. They want: what time does the fixture start, what time should my child arrive, where exactly should they go, how are they getting there, what time will they be back, what do they need to bring.
The detail that PE staff consider obvious — the meeting point is the sports hall entrance, not the main gate — is not obvious to a parent who doesn’t know the school well or whose child hasn’t played an away fixture before. Specificity in fixture communications reduces the queries that come in afterwards and reduces the chance of a parent arriving at the wrong place.
Changes, promptly
If a fixture is cancelled, moved, or delayed, parents want to know immediately — not at the end of the school day, not via their child that evening. The parent who has arranged their Saturday around a 10am fixture needs to know by Friday, not on Saturday morning.
This is the area where parent frustration is most acute. A late notification of a change — or no notification at all — is the thing parents remember and mention. The school that communicates changes quickly builds a reputation for reliability. The one that doesn’t creates a background level of distrust that affects everything else.
Results
Parents want to know how their child’s team did. Not just whether they won — the score, who scored if it’s a scoring sport, how the team performed in context. A brief result notification doesn’t have to be long: “U13A Football — won 3-1 against Westfield. Great team performance.” That’s enough.
Results that are published days later have lost most of their value. A parent who finds out on Monday that their child won a match on Saturday has had a weekend of not knowing whether to ask. The connection between the event and the information is strongest when the gap is shortest.
How their child is doing
This is the one that’s hardest to systematise. Beyond results, parents want to know whether their child is developing, whether they’re enjoying sport, whether they’re being included. This is mostly communicated through informal channels — what their child says, what they observe when they watch a match — but parents who feel their child is getting lost in a big programme appreciate any signal that their child is seen.
This doesn’t require individual reports on every student. A coach who mentions a student by name in a team update, or who sends a brief note after a student has had a particularly good performance, creates a disproportionately positive impression.
What gets in the way of communicating this
Most PE departments want to communicate well with parents. The barriers are usually practical rather than attitudinal.
Time. Writing individual communications for each fixture, each club, each event takes time that coordinators don’t have. If sending a result notification requires composing an email, finding the right parent list, and sending it — when you’ve just driven back from an away fixture and have a stack of other things to do — it often doesn’t happen.
The wrong tools. Many schools are communicating sport information through general school communication channels that weren’t designed for it — a parent portal that’s checked infrequently, a newsletter that goes out weekly, an email system that requires IT support to use properly. When the tool doesn’t fit the task, the communication suffers.
Inconsistency. A parent who received a fixture notification last month but not this month doesn’t know whether to check somewhere else or whether the information isn’t available. Inconsistent communication is often worse than no communication, because it creates uncertainty about whether the channel is reliable.
What the schools that do this well have in common
Schools that consistently get good feedback from parents about sport communications tend to share a few characteristics.
They communicate through a single channel that parents learn to rely on. Whether it’s an app, an email system, or a combination — there’s one place parents know to look, and it’s consistently updated. The parent who knows that fixture information always comes through the app, and checks the app, is better served than one who has to decide whether to check the app, the website, the newsletter, or wait for their child to mention it.
They automate the routine communications. Fixture confirmations, result notifications, reminders before events — these happen automatically as part of the fixture workflow rather than as manual tasks someone has to remember. The coordinator who adds a fixture to the system and knows that parents will be notified automatically doesn’t have to remember to send a separate message.
They’re specific and timely. Not necessarily elaborate — a one-line result notification sent within an hour of the match is more valued than a detailed match report sent three days later.
A practical starting point
If you want to understand how your school’s sport communication is landing with parents, the fastest way to find out is to ask. A four-question survey — do you receive information about your child’s sport involvement? Is it timely? Is it specific enough? What would you want that you’re not currently getting? — takes ten minutes to create and gives you a clear picture of where the gaps are.
Most parents, when asked, are more specific and more reasonable than coordinators expect. They’re not asking for a weekly newsletter about school sport. They’re asking to know when the fixture is and whether their child is in it. Meeting that expectation is more achievable than it sometimes feels.