The last few months have not been easy for anyone. We recognise the amazing work schools have been doing to keep families learning at home and we have been proud to help them wherever we can. Our team have all got used to working remotely too which has been a bit of a shift for us. We love our usual view of the Thames, watching the world go by from Greenwich, and cannot wait until we are all able to be in the office together safely again. We promise some river view photos when we are back!

In the meantime it has been really important to us to make life for schools as easy as we can. School website traffic has never been higher. Usually we see this kind of traffic for the occasional sudden snow day but never so much traffic for such an extended period. This can be challenging, and we certainly have had all hands to the pump working all hours at the start of the school closures back in March, ensuring all your websites stayed up and running under this new load. That’s what we do best and we are happy to have been there for schools.

We realise that the school website has been the source of home learning links for most of our schools, if not all to some extent. Newsletters are being added more frequently than ever. More schools than ever are using the Home Page Alert feature to give an immediate message to visitors of their website and links to relevant home learning pages. More parents have been subscribing to news feeds and calendar updates so that they get the most up-to-date changes instantly. Schools are using the Greenhouse CMS to set up new learning pages and links, and photo galleries to share the work done from home alongside work done by key worker children in school. And schools are using our CMS to publish updates to the website directly to their Twitter feed to reach more parents that way too.

We have also launched new websites during this time too. Our latest designs for May can be found on our blog here. We are creating virtual tours for schools too which is helping especially where Open Days are not possible. We could not do all we do without the support of the schools we work with so thank you so much for working with us in these very strange times for everyone. As parents ourselves, thank you also for sending so much work home via the website and all other means to your parents who are taking on the home learning teacher role.

We also thank the following schools who have taken time to thank our team for their work.  The comments below are a real ray of sunshine for us. It means the world to us to have happy schools and we would like to thank our team too for all they have continued to do through their own tricky circumstances. As ever, we will always be just a phone call, or email, or web chat, away.

“I thought I’d drop you a line to say thank you for all the work you and your team put into our website. In these strange times it is an enormous support for our children’s learning and their families as it provides a daily link between our teachers and the children in their classes.”

Communications & Marketing Officer, Swaffield School

“Thank you. And again, well done on such a fabulous platform for us to use. We have been successfully delivering our full curriculum, remotely since mid-March and your website has played a huge part in enabling that to happen. Great job!”

Head Teacher, Bertha Park High School

“Thank you Graham. Prompt and efficient response as always. Jill and I are always grateful for the excellent service you provide, now more than ever as we face new challenges every day. Best wishes to you and the team.”

Jackie, Dartford Grammar School

“Thank you for all your help, as always Greenhouse Support Staff are fantastic. Stay safe and well.”

Lisa, Wheatfields Junior School

“I just wanted to say thanks for making our website so easy to add and tweak the much needed home alert page during the ongoing (yawn!) Covid-19 period!”

Neil, Portesbery School

“I wouldn’t want to use a different platform – I’ve used a few over the years and Greenhouse is by far the best! I promote you whenever I can. Keep safe and well and best wishes to all at Greenhouse.”

Shirley, Hurst Primary School

“Thanks again for your help today 🙂 You have been super responsive as always! I have spent most of the day working on the website, finishing setting up the new menu tabs and the system is a pleasure to work with. PS: I do have schools asking about recommendations… so will keep passing on the good words!”

Heidi, St James Primary School