Five New Content Ideas for Post Corona Student Planners

We are seeing some new trends emerging in relation to the fall out of the Coronavirus outbreak, with schools seeing their 2024/25 student planners as an ideal place to reaffirm new school protocol and support families with relevant PHSE information.  I’ve collected a selection of top trends for planner content together to help you decide on what to include for next year.

• Hygiene.  The top area where schools are really seeing a need to reaffirm and amend existing protocols is personal hygiene.  Many schools are amending the first 16-page section (before the diary) to include detailed instructions on what the expectation is of students attending the school.  The planner is seen as a very effective way of keeping this kind of information in front of students and parents on a daily basis. 
• Wellbeing and mental health.  It goes without saying that the current unprecedented situation will have long lasting effect on a great many people’s mental health, with careful management of children’s understanding of the situation a priority.  Include signposting in your student planner for students and parents looking for wider support to ease the strain and improve wellbeing in school. 
• Develop a community.  Despite all the stress piled upon everyone now there is a very welcome strand developing where communities are forging new and very positive ties.  This is something that cannot be forgotten, and schools can harness to promote greater unity in the future.  We’ve a very interesting Case Study from a school in Leeds who use their student planners to create sense of community amongst a student body where over 50 languages are spoken. 
• Bespoke diary layouts.  We are the best at creating bespoke diaries for schools.  Of the 1500 schools we currently provide student planners for I would say well over 50% include a bespoke diary.  We’re seeing a large increase this year in these kind of diaries as school leaders want to provide a planner that really supports students with a bespoke learning experience. 
• Links to home learning.  Like it or not but I can see the current home learning experience being enjoyed (or tolerated) in most homes across the UK is here to stay in some form.  It’s important that communications channels between school and home are maintained and I see the student planner having an increasingly important part to play in this relationship.

Interested in hearing more about of the above ideas? Drop us a quick line at info@penstripe.co.uk to get a conversation started, or look through some of our testimonials. We’d love to support you in developing your school’s planners to be the best they can possibly be.