Preparing the school diary for print – timing

[Alexandra Norton]

Hello everyone

I am hoping to hear from different schools on how you put together the content for your school diary. My main area of interest is your timing.

Our diary is one that has school information at the start – general info, staff etc. the end of the diary includes school policies, clubs, co-curricular information etc. The middles has the calendar, with school events listed on each day.

We have an ‘administrator’ on each of our campuses – Junior School and Senior School. All staff members submit their dates to these administrators and they then input them – when they have time. Calendar meetings are held towards the end of the year where dates are cross checked and clashes sorted out. As it is the end of the year, these two staff members are already busy and calendar items are often not put in until after Speech Day – not ideal! Only then can I pull out the data. Every year we seem to be sending off our diary content at the very last minute of the last day that will ensure delivery for the start of Term 1. Needless to say, the whole process is very stressful!

I would love to hear from other schools:
* By roughly what date do you have all your calendar items in your school calendar?
* Who does this?
* How do you keep everyone on track to get everything in by your due date?
* How does your checking process work prior to sending to print?

Every year we say, ‘We aren’t doing it that way again!’ so any advice would be gratefully received. :)

[Alison Goodall]

Hi Alexandra,

We used to run a similar process at my school however we made the decision to change the content that is included in the diary.

After many years of events being changed after they were already printed, we decided to remove all school event dates (except for term dates) to ensure that there wasn’t anything incorrect as it was really making us look like we were very poor at organising things and lowering the confidence of families that any of the dates were correct. We have dates available via our newsletter, app and website for families. Each subsection of the school goes out with really ímportant/parent invitation dates at the start of each term.

Hope that helps!

Alison

[Ross Donnan]

Hi Alexandra,

– We have our dates ready by early October for the following year
– I (the graphic designer) lay out the artwork based on what the admins provide
– the admins around the school (Junior and Secondary) are very good at project managing the staff and getting content to me by the time frame
– We have the printer send us a digital proof
– The printer is a specialist at binding, as a result they are very affordable.
– The Junior school uses a wellbeing company who produce the diary, then I lay out the first 20 pages and have ready for print.

Feel free to get in touch if you want any details.

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