Allowing parents to check up on their child's attendance, detentions and reports is something that until recently has only been possible in a face-to-face meeting between parent and teacher. Yet today, hundreds of secondary schools across the UK are adding parent portals to their public access websites, allowing parents the ability to see, minute-by-minute, what their children are getting up to.
No longer will letters from school stating that an errant pupil is on detention for a month, or is failing to turn up regularly, "disappear" on the walk home. Parents and carers can simply log into the school system using their username and password, and see for themselves.
At the Robert Napier school in Gillingham, Kent, a parent portal has been in operation for a year to give parents access to view their children's personal contact data, merits and detentions, attendance and school reports.
The portal is an extension of the school's management information system, Facility CMIS from Serco. This is used throughout the school, enabling every teacher access to view and work with finance, planning and student records.
Since going live with the portal, Dave Morton, assistant head at the school, says around two thirds of parents with children attending the school have requested access, totalling around 800 families.
Morton says: "Parents I've spoken to have said they find it useful; it gives them an idea of how their sons and daughters are doing. I think most parents [with access to the portal] are using it. If they can't log on for some reason, we hear about it quickly."
He also says the portal is giving parents more control. "Parents have conversations with their children about attendance and punctuality. It gives parents more opportunity to have input into their child's learning, and increases the dialog between parents and teachers."
To ensure security, the school has added an electronic, user-certificate layer of protection to the login and password. Parents have to request a certificate that allows access to the portal from just one computer. "Parents can see only their own children's records,"says Morton.
