School administration and parent communication prompts

At half past seven on Tuesday morning, a vice-principal is in the office drafting an urgent suspension notice for Secondary 2 parents. She asks a general AI to "write a suspension circular". Back comes a draft that opens with "Dear Parents" instead of the school's standard salutation, and it fills in "suspended until Friday" — when the management meeting last night decided on one day only. She is relieved she did not send it out.

Administrative prompts turn correct format, appropriate register and "verifiable fields as placeholders" into something that happens every time. This lesson is the administration and parent-communication strand of the prompt engineering course, leading into grounded prompts with citations.

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Format is harder than content

Administrative writing has one defining property: the format is harder than the content. A circular says about five things. What is hard is the greeting, the reference number, the reply slip layout, the exact degree of formality, and whether a sentence could be misread by a parent. Those are precisely what a general model does not know, because it has never read your school's documents.

Think of it as a capable new administrative assistant: good with words, unclear on your school's layout and register. If nobody shows them what a school circular looks like, they write the version they have seen elsewhere. In the short term, a format description inside the prompt; in the long term, a school knowledge base that has actually read your templates. See the school knowledge base and knowledge bases and RAG.

The second principle is about safety. Pasting real personal data into a general-purpose AI is the most common and most serious mistake in administrative use. A pupil's name, class, student number, a parent's phone number, an SEN assessment result — once any of these goes into a consumer tool with no no-training terms, no encryption at rest and no audit trail, the school has lost control of that data. Placeholders are not an inconvenience; they are the condition that makes AI safe to use here. AI handles the words, identities stay in school systems. The six data protection principles under the Personal Data (Privacy) Ordinance are what principals and school management committees will cite.

Placeholders are the foundation: they let you draft with AI while personal data never leaves the school.

Four ready templates

Circular with reply slip

Role: you are a teacher in the [team name] of a Hong Kong [primary/secondary] school who writes circulars to parents.
Task: write a circular about [matter], with a reply slip.
Output:
1. Circular body, 250 words maximum, covering in order — purpose, date, time and venue, what students need to bring or know, fees, what parents need to do.
2. A separate reply slip with a parent signature line and a return date.
3. A list headed "information to verify" naming every placeholder used in the body and the slip.
Constraints: formal and concise Hong Kong English with the school's standard salutation; no sentimental or promotional sentences. Render every date, time, venue, amount, deadline and staff name as a [square-bracket placeholder] and never fill one in or guess it. Include no student names, classes or student numbers.
Background: [one or two sentences on the nature of the matter and what parents need to do]

Letter to parents

This is the most sensitive category. The key is to describe behaviour rather than a person, and to enter no identifying data at all.

Role: you are a Hong Kong secondary school class teacher writing to a parent about a student's situation. The purpose is to invite a meeting, not to lay blame.
Task: write a letter setting out what the school has observed, the support already provided, and what you would like to discuss with the parent.
Output format: letter body of no more than 300 words in three paragraphs — observations, what the school has done, an invitation to meet with two time options. Add one line headed "information to verify in this letter".
Constraints: respectful tone, no blame, no diagnosis and no judgement of the student's ability or character. Refer to the student only as [the student]; use placeholders for all dates, times, venues and staff names. Do not suggest any outside service or organisation, as that follows school procedure. If you are unsure of a school procedure, write "verify against school procedure" rather than describing a process yourself.
Situation (no names): [describe behaviour, for example "four late arrivals in two weeks, three missed homework submissions, noticeably reduced class participation"]

Meeting minutes

Role: you are an assistant who turns rough notes into formal minutes.
Task: below are scattered notes from a [panel/committee] meeting. Produce formal minutes.
Output:
1. A meeting details block (date, time, venue, attendance) rendered as placeholders.
2. "Matters discussed", following the agenda, two or three sentences per item, recording only what was actually said.
3. "Decisions and follow-up" as a list — decision, responsible role, deadline.
4. A list headed "unclear in the notes" naming everything you could not determine.
Constraints: do not complete the meaning of an ambiguous sentence and do not write a conclusion for a discussion that did not reach one; put anything uncertain in section 4. Identify people by role (panel head, class teacher) rather than by name. Hong Kong English, neutral register.
Notes: [paste notes with names and student details removed first]

Parents' evening script

Role: you are the [subject] panel head in a Hong Kong secondary school, speaking to Secondary 2 parents about how the subject is organised this year.
Task: write an eight-minute script.
Output format: the full script (about 900 words) in four parts — this year's learning focus, homework and assessment arrangements, how parents can support at home, and a lead-in to questions. Add three lines of "speaker notes" flagging where to slow down and where to read the room.
Constraints: spoken but professional Hong Kong English, no stacking of educational jargon, and one plain-language gloss whenever a technical term appears. Promise nothing the school has not confirmed. Render every date, weighting and number of assessments as a placeholder and list them for verification at the end. Name no student and no member of staff.
Background: [this year's focus, and the three questions parents most often ask]

For bilingual circulars, generate the Chinese version with the template above, then run a second, separate request translating the finalised Chinese, with a constraint to keep the same level of formality, copy proper nouns and amounts across verbatim, and not reorganise the paragraphs. Do not ask for both versions in one go, or the two will drift apart.

Where people go wrong

• Pasting real data into a general-purpose tool. Usually a whole attendance record or mark sheet, unaltered. Self-check: have names, classes, student numbers and contact details been stripped before pasting? If the file still contains identifiable data, it should not go in.
• No word limit and no register specified. The default output is long and enthusiastic, so the circular reads like a leaflet. Self-check: does the constraints line include a word ceiling and an explicit ban on sentimental phrasing?
• Letting the model fill in dates and fees. It will, and the results look entirely plausible. Self-check: are all verifiable fields placeholders, with a separate checklist?
• Letting the model complete the conclusions in minutes. Notes saying "general feeling was agreement" become "the meeting resolved". Self-check: is uncertainty routed into "unclear in the notes" rather than written as a decision?

Try it once

Choose one administrative item you are issuing this week — an activity circular, a letter to parents or panel minutes. Use the closest template above, fill the background or situation field with two sentences of real content (no names or student numbers), and run it once.

What to do: Place the AI output beside a similar document from your school last year. Check three things — does the greeting and format look like your school's paperwork? Are all verifiable fields placeholders with a checklist? Did the model fill in any date, fee or deadline itself?

What to hand in: A first draft plus your own completed "information to verify" list (five items maximum), naming who you would check each item with (for example the general office, the panel head, last meeting's minutes).

How you know it worked: The draft needs only placeholders filled in, not a structural or register rewrite, and for every item on the checklist you know where to find the correct answer. If the model filled in any date or amount, strengthen the constraints line.

To have AI quote your school's own circular templates and policy wording directly, see grounded prompts with citations. For the wider set of administrative work that can move to AI, see reducing teacher administrative workload.