School Newsletter Ideas: 13 Education Email Templates & Tools
Paul Newham 
Struggling to come up with fresh school newsletter ideas? We hear you. Email newsletters are an easy, cheap way to keep in touch with lots of people. But when you’re sending them week in, week out, it’s easy to hit a wall.
Are you worried the design is looking a bit tired? Are you tired of churning out the same old things? When inspiration is waning and open rates are dipping, it’s time to act. You need to kickstart your creativity with some professional-quality newsletter templates.
Professional quality? Won’t that cost? It might surprise you to hear, but no! Great-looking school newsletter templates are easy to find and free to use. In this guide, I’m going to show you where to find them, and how to use them. And also pick out some great-looking examples to get you started.
Free School Newsletter Templates
The best place to find free email templates online is Stripo. Stripo has more than 1600 pro-quality templates to choose from. And 80+ education-themed templates.
I’ve picked out some of my favourite school newsletter templates on Stripo.
Free Back-to-School Newsletter Templates
The start of a new academic year is peak season for education businesses. It’s time to push out those back-to-school promotions. It’s time for a back-to-school newsletter template.
The one above is a great example. It’s eye-catching, with lots of images. As a product promotion template, it has plenty of clear, distinct sections to drop in products and offers. Plus lots of buttons for your CTAs. All elements are well-spaced and clearly laid out.
This template does a similar job. I like that it’s image-led. It has a clear, logical structure that lets the eye scan important information quickly. It’s got a strong colour scheme that creates contrast. Colour contrast is both visually appealing and helps readers process information.
This template is a great example if you want to promote a limited-time offer. It’s a very stripped-back, simple design. All the focus is drawn to the product images. They provide most of the colour and visual interest. Everything else is kept to a minimum. A simple header, a countdown timer, and some CTA buttons. Even the description of the product features is kept as minimal as possible.
This last one on the back-to-school theme has a different purpose. It’s more about sharing advice and information rather than promoting products. This would make a good school newsletter template.
It has a great on-topic aesthetic. Good design works on a subconscious and a conscious level. So those ‘classroom’ graphics and the paper background create the right associations. Again, it leads with a strong image.
Free Seasonal Email Templates for Schools
Seasonal templates help make your newsletter relevant to landmarks in the school calendar. These also represent major promotional opportunities for educational businesses.
This Poetry Day template has a classic look to it. It’s all about simplicity. Simple colours. Simple layout. Everything is easy to take in and uncluttered. I like the way this template uses spacers between rows and columns to create separate blocks. Content is organised in a very clear way and is easy to read.
This template makes a great contrast to the last one. It has a lot more going on visually. The design suits the Family Day theme. Note how the buttons pop. Making your buttons stand out like that is always a good plan.
There are similarities, too. The basic layouts are the same. The main headers on both templates are very similar. They follow a classic header format with a logo, a title, a main image and a short description.
This Earth Day template is a little more complex in its design. It takes a few more risks to create visual interest. But for me it pulls them off. Part of this is down to the softer colour palette.
What I really like about this one is the way it merges content blocks. There’s no clear separation as you get with the previous two. You have to be careful doing this as separation makes your content easier to scan. But this one works by keeping a good buffer around the different blocks of text. The central image sits across 2 sections. This draws the eye right to the middle of the template.
Free Faculty or Student Showcase Email Templates
This template is a great starting point for any student body newsletter. Again, it follows a classic format. There’s a header section that leads with an image.
Then comes the detail. Notice the colour contrast again. I like the way this template alternates text and images. The white space in the middle separates the blocks and stops it from looking jumbled.
This template is a little different. It’s not really a newsletter template. It’s more of a resume, faculty, or student showcase email template. It’s also a great design that shows how to pack a lot of information onto one email template in a clear, reader-friendly way.
The rest is all about the efficient use of space. Two simple columns. Short, concise blocks of information. Each one well spaced for easy scanning. Great use of headings with contrasting colours, again to make it easy to read.
Free Book and Course Email Templates for Schools
This template ticks the boxes for clarity and simplicity once again. I particularly like the header image. Also notice the way the text itself is broken up into headers, body text and buttons. Everything is short, clear and easy to digest.
This is a nice modern template, designed to promote courses. Creating visual interest makes sense when you are promoting a product. You want to grab attention. And back that engagement up with prominent CTAs.
This template does both well. There’s just the right amount of colour. It isn’t overdone and is offset by the white background in the middle. The images and shapes are mixed with a clean table. Then you’re straight into the CTA.
Free Graduation Email Templates for Schools
Sharing and celebrating academic achievements are common reasons for emailing students. This is an ideal showcase or invitation template.
Aside from that, this is a very straightforward template. But also very reader-friendly. The photos grab the attention. Then it’s just a case of communicating the details in a clear, simple way.
This is another invitation template that is primed for personalization. It takes a slightly different approach to the minimalism of the last one.
There’s the two-column block below. It might not be practical to turn this into a personalized ‘memory lane’ as shown. But the alternating images and text are useful for sharing any kind of information.
10 Ideas for Engaging School Newsletters
Many schools, colleges and universities rely on email newsletters. They are an easy and cheap way to communicate with lots of people at once. They are perfect for parent mail, keeping in touch with students, alumni, and faculty.
But email newsletters only work if people read them. We all know what it’s like. We sign up for all sorts of emails. You have to give subscribers a reason to open and read. We have a guide to the best 99 free responsive email templates (for multiple purposes) for more ideas – not only school-related. But below are some really good items specific for the educational industry.
Here are some great tips for making your newsletters engaging.
1. Celebrate student achievements
If you want high open rates for your school newsletter, make it about your students. It will give them and their parents/guardians a reason to read every week. Show off great work. Talk about class projects. Report on your sports teams. Anything to put students front and centre.
2. Let students create the content
Featuring articles by students is another great way to put them front and centre. You could even channel the school newspaper tradition and hand over editorial responsibilities. Either way, student involvement will increase interest. And you can make it tie in with the curriculum.
3. Photo of the week
I’ve talked a lot about how important images are to newsletters. Great images grab attention. You can link this to focusing on achievements and involving students. A ‘photo of the week’ could be a featured picture of something cool your students have been up to. Or a great picture taken by a student.
4. Give each newsletter a theme
Newsletters work best when they have a clear purpose. One way to do this is to give each one a theme. Again, you can tie into the curriculum by picking a topic of study for each newsletter. It’s another opportunity to showcase student’s work. But also share useful resources and involve parents in the learning.
5. Run features about staff
Students and parents are also fascinated by the people who teach them. They love to get to know the people they are outside the classroom.
6. Flag upcoming events
Newsletters should be useful. Highlighting upcoming school events in every newsletter is useful information. It helps people remember key dates. And it gives people options for getting involved in the school community.
7. Focus on fundraising
Everyone loves a good cause. Fundraising and charity work showcase the school community in the best way possible. Fundraising makes for a great story. And including it in your newsletter can also help raise extra money. Check out our guide on nonprofit email marketing for fundraising email examples.
8. Community and local news
All education establishments play important roles in the wider community. So you can widen the appeal of your newsletter by including local and community news.
9. Run a competition
‘Gamification’ is the idea of making content fun by including elements of games. With newsletters, this is easy. Just run a quiz or a puzzle.
10. Mental health and well-being tips
Finally, the pastoral side of education is as important as the academic. Mental health and well-being tips are useful to students and their families. Especially around exam time!
What is the Best Tool for Creating School Newsletters?
Choosing a great template is just the first step in creating your school newsletter. Next, you need to edit it and add your own content.
People are using templates because they want a quick, easy option. Templates are there to make HTML emails accessible to everyone, not just coders.
To turn your template into your own newsletter, you need a no-code email editor. Beyond editing your template, email marketing tools will also handle sending your newsletter. The benefits include being able to automate sending. And managing who you send to.
Here are our top 4 picks for free tools to create your school newsletter. If you’re only looking for an email builder, you can compare the best free email template editors here. We also reviewed newsletter software platforms. These are email marketing tools with features to send your newsletters, create landing pages, and automate emails.
Stripo
Stripo isn’t just a great source of free newsletter templates, it’s also an email builder. So you can pick a template you love. And then turn it into a finished school newsletter right there in the same platform.
Stripo’s drag-and-drop editor is full of options and easy to use. You can design templates in mobile mode. And there’s an AI assistant.
You can’t send out your newsletter with Stripo. It’s a standalone editor. But it does integrate easily with 80+ email marketing services. You can build 10 newsletters for free. After that, it costs $20 a month for 50 newsletters per month.
MailerLite
MailerLite is perfect for designing and sending school newsletters. Its drag-and-drop editor is very user-friendly. It’s especially good for flipping layouts quickly. It has a great choice of ready-to-go layouts that you just drop in and start editing. You can also use an RSS feed to turn news and blogs from your website into a newsletter.
MailerLite is great value. Its free plan lets you send 12,000 emails a month to 500 contacts. For many schools, that’s plenty to run even a weekly newsletter. Pricing starts at $9 a month.
Get started with MailerLite for free or read our full review
Moosend
Moosend combines ease of use with amazing value. It doesn’t have a free option. But with prices starting at just $7 a month, it’s one of the cheapest email marketing tools.
You get a lot for your money, too. Moosend holds its own for easy email building. But where it shines is automations. Its automation ‘recipes’ let you automate email sending in advance. They can save you a lot of time and effort.
Try Moosend for free or read our full review
Brevo
Brevo’s big plus as a newsletter tool is its awesome free plan. You can send 300 emails a day without charge. WhatsApp and SMS are also included. So you can experiment with sending out your newsletter in different ways.
Like the other options I’ve picked out, Brevo has a user-friendly template editor. It’s great for customizing layouts. You can create a style template from your school website for a consistent look and feel. It’s also strong on automation.
Get started with Brevo for free or read our full review
Concluding School Newsletter Ideas
School newsletters are a great way to communicate important information to people. They also help to foster a sense of community around your school or college. But there’s no getting around it. Writing, designing and sending newsletters is work.
Templates save you a lot of time on the design side. And as we’ve also highlighted, you can use email marketing platforms to help with the sending. Hopefully, we gave you plenty of inspiration with the template examples we picked out. Now it’s over to you to explore your own school newsletter ideas.