SCHOOL SPOTLIGHT
Taipei European School
Transforming Parent & Staff Communication with a Unified Web & Mobile Platform
Before 2020, Taipei European School (TES) had redesigned its website three times in six years. Each version tried to meet the school’s complex communication needs, but none quite delivered.
Behind the constant changes were deeper issues: fragmented systems, inconsistent messaging, and a lack of clarity for families navigating a school with four distinct sections.
At a Glance
As a European international school in the Shilin District of Taipei, Taipei European School (TES) operates three European language sections in one school: French, German and English sections, each offering their respective national curricula for students aged 3 to 18 years.
As Kerry Nockolds, Director of Marketing and Communications, explained, “Everybody had their own approach to communications—different people doing different things in different ways—and it gave us an inconsistent look that didn’t reflect who we were as a school.”
TES serves more than 1,700 students across British, French, German, and bilingual sections. In practice, it's four distinct schools sharing one foundation, each with its own leadership, curriculum, and parent community. Coordinating communications across these divisions and making that experience seamless for families proved especially difficult.
What followed was a transformation driven by a small team using one platform to bring consistency, clarity, and efficiency to the entire school community.
The Challenge: Fragmented School Communications
With four distinct school sections operating under one umbrella, Taipei European School had developed a communications maze. Each section—British, French, German, and bilingual—had its own way of doing things. Over time, this created a fragmented experience for families, who often received messages in different formats, from different people, at different times.
Parents were left piecing things together, scrolling through crowded WhatsApp groups, searching email threads, or trying to remember which platform had which update. The school calendar, overloaded with events from four different sections, was equally difficult to navigate and rarely personalized to each family’s needs.
Behind the scenes, staff relied on generic tools to send bulk emails, leading to delivery issues and occasional missteps, like accidentally exposing email addresses to the entire recipient list.
With a small three-person communications team managing everything, TES needed a way to bring structure, consistency, and simplicity to how it connected with its community.
“Calendars, news, messages—it’s all in one place, and that’s a game-changer. It’s all there at your fingertips.”
KERRY NOCKOLDS
DIRECTOR OF MARKETING & COMMUNICATIONS
The Solution: One Platform, Many Tools—All Working Together
To bring order to the complexity, TES turned to Finalsite as a platform and as a strategic partner. Together, they built a communications system centered on three goals: clarity, speed, and ease of use.
Parent and Faculty Portals Designed for Function
The parent portal was built with one priority in mind: to make life easier for families. It trades flash for function, offering direct access to calendars, news, handbooks, and an archive of past communications. Usage analytics helped the team fine-tune the layout based on what parents actually needed.
“Parents weren’t necessarily needing the beauty,” said Kerry. “They just wanted the function. The goal was to make things as easy as possible for both parents and staff. That meant rethinking how we shared information and who managed what,” he added.
On the staff side, a dedicated faculty portal gave teachers a faster way to get what they needed. Role-based quicklinks now direct them to HR documents, safety protocols, IT requests, and tools specific to their section. Teachers can even set their landing page as a homepage for daily use, saving time and reducing repetitive questions across campus.
Smart Calendars and News, Personalized by Section
The school calendar used to be a pain point, but now, it's one of TES’s most impactful tools. Parents can filter by section—British, French, German, or bilingual—and see only the events that matter to their child’s experience. School news follows the same model: targeted updates by section, so families aren’t overwhelmed with information that doesn’t apply to them.
“It’s all about making life easier for the parents,” Kerry emphasized. “That was a key aspect of the calendar.”
Scalable Email with Finalsite Messages
Replacing the school’s old bulk email system, Finalsite Messages gave TES a far more powerful way to communicate. With daily syncs from PowerSchool, email lists stay accurate without manual updates.
“Before, we’d hit send limits, emails would bounce, or we’d accidentally expose addresses,” Kerry said. “Those risks are gone now. We can send thousands and thousands of emails and not have to worry about that issue,” Kerry said, adding that the school now sends between 45,000 and 60,000 emails each month—reliably, securely, and with full analytics on opens and clicks.
A regular cadence (Thursday CEO updates, Friday section newsletters) also helps families know what to expect and when, cutting through the noise.
Streamlined Forms, Direct to Departments
Finalsite Forms replaced a patchwork of Google Forms that previously required staff to manage responses by hand. Now, departments like Admissions, HR, and IT can control their own forms, and responses are automatically routed to the right inboxes. Not only does this save the communications team from being the middleman, but it also supports better planning through easy tracking of submission volume.
A Mobile App Built for Parents
TES has also recently launched its mobile app, bringing calendars, news, and messages straight to parents’ phones. Built on the Finalsite platform, the app offers personalization, push notifications, and one-touch access to the content parents use most.
“Parents were logging into portals before, but now the information comes to them," Kerry said. “Calendars, news, messages—it’s all in one place, and that’s a game-changer. It’s all there at your fingertips.”
The Results: Clarity, Consistency, and Capacity
The impact of TES’ communications overhaul is visible across the school community:
Scalable, Reliable Communication
With nearly two million messages sent through Finalsite, a three-person team now manages communications across all four sections—without delivery issues, data risks, or bottlenecks.
Time Savings Across Departments
Self-managed forms and faculty portals have lightened the load on HR, IT, and admissions, reducing repetitive questions and manual oversight.
Smarter Strategy Through Data
Built-in analytics allow the team to track engagement, refine messaging, and better understand how families are interacting with the site.
Unifying its tools into a single platform lets Taipei European School focus on the experience of parents and staff. Now technology supports its communications strategy with a system that’s faster, easier, and more reliable for everyone. Parents find what they need without frustration, staff spend less time answering the same questions, and school leaders can track what’s working—and where to adjust.
“It used to take so much more effort to reach people—and now we can send one message and know it got through. That confidence is huge,” Kerry noted. Most of all, this transformation proves that even a small team, with the right tools and a clear plan, has made it easier for families to get what they need—when they need it. Or, as Kerry put it: “If parents can personalize it and get what they need, then you’ve hit the jackpot.”
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