ELC Bristol and the Elsieapp Social Event Feature

For ELC Bristol, social events are a key part of the student learning experience.  

Each week sees 2-4 local events happening and a weekend excursion outside Bristol.  The number of students signing up can range from just a handful of people to a summer peak of up to 150 students in 3 coaches, many of whom will be under 18.

With so many students, and an increasing number of minors, it’s absolutely critical to ensure all the key information is instantly available from the booking, right through the event.

Prior to Elsieapp the school relied on a very manual process:

Students would add their name to a signup sheet – the event manager would work through the list, tackle any illegible names and verify all the attendees against the school’s student information.

To ensure they had the right personal details for the event, such as emergency contact details, they would print off the entire school’s student list. Once on the excursion, if they needed to contact an attendee, they would then need to find them alphabetically on the student list.

There were many problems with this approach.

It was time consuming to prepare and time consuming to find a student details on the huge list but more significantly it was difficult to be certain that the information they had was 100% correct - it was not uncommon to find incorrect and old mobile phone numbers or blank emergency contact details.

Additionally, printing and using a full list of the school’s students on every excursion carried with it very significant data protection implications.

Moving to Elsieapp has, in the words of Lily Lunan – ELC Bristol Social Programme Manager, "completely revolutionised how we manage our activities and excursions".

Now, when a student joins an activity, their details are instantly checked on the system and their phone number verified. For many students this may be the first time they let the school know about changes, so excursions become a very valuable touch point, with the information updating their main student record.

Elsieapp allows the school to directly SMS all the attendees – students can be reminded about the event details or updated on any changes before, during and after the event.

Having student photos included on the printed or online excursion list has been a valuable feature for ELC Bristol, allowing staff to easily visually verify the students they may not already know in person - To quote Lily again, "for this feature alone, I can't rate it highly enough".

As well as ensuring the accuracy of critical information, the move to Elsieapp has cut down a huge amount of unnecessary work for the social events manager - "to process the student information pack used to take the best part of an hour and that’s probably been cut down to under 10 minutes and can be done by any of the staff managing a social event. It's streamlined the whole process".