Hi Cath,
We are a P-12 school of 1450 students.
We ceased publication of our Yearbook after 2020, in favour of producing a high quality quarterly publication which captures all of our events, awards, co-curricular etc plus more, in a much more timely manner. We write, design and produce completely in-house and print roughly 200 copies each quarter and also send out digitally – aiming to send out by Week 1 or 2 of each term.
Although this was initially a daunting thought- getting rid of something that us as staff often had such nostalgic attachments to from our own school years. We found the time and cost invested was not worth the output and was simply not something our younger community valued. The change has been well received by our community, with no complaints from staff or families. We have found staff/students are much happier to help out with articles/photos as each event happens, rather than huge wrap ups at the end of the year when they are burnt out and extremely busy. Parents are also much more engaged with content being current and more student focused.
Also worth mentioning, that we are a young school (22 years old), so enacting this kind of change was relatively easy and painless in not having to deal with the ‘this is how its always been done’ kind of mentality.