Can we give out student email addresses?

[Heggy]

We've just been asked if there are any reasons that our Year 7's couldn't give their email addresses to Year 6 students who will arrive in September.
The idea is that they will mentor the new intake & this is the initial stage of establishing relationships. Our students are meant to answer queries & worries.

The whole setup is being managed by the team which supports the new intake.

We've advised that the parents of the Y7's should be sent a letter saying that we will be handing these out, if they have any objections to write in. I'll also advise that our Y7's should be given a once over of E-Safety guidelines.

Are we allowed to give out students email in this way? Or is it publishing personal data?
Both sets of students use LEA email systems which adhere to DPA/child protection standards.

Does anyone else do this type of thing already? If anyone can share any experience of this, I'd be massively grateful.

Are there any reasons we shouldn't be doing this?


Thanks

[elsiegee40]

Technically, you should not be publishing the email addresses in this way. Publishing one long list matching each mentor email address to the incoming student is a definite no-no. Each incoming student should only know the email of their own mentor and vice-versa... even then, I'm not sure about permissions needed... it should be OK if it's a school email address is being given out.

[plexer]

so you don't have address books so that students can contact each other? You're not making the information publicly available.

[elsiegee40]

One option would be to setup the incoming year 6s on your VLE so that you can use the school email system now. they could then use the school address book to contact their Year 7 mentors

However, these kids will not have signed your AUP and some of them may not end up joining you in September, so this solution would require thought.

[alan-d]

It may be worth asking the LEA if they are running a transition program. If not then set up a moodle site for this purpose, the accounts could be deleted at a later date.

Birmingham are running one - Virtual Transition 2009

[rh91uk]

You could set up a spreadsheet with all the email addresses in each column, then all the year6 email addresses in another column. You can then set up a mail merge email message, sending to the email address in field B1, printing, in the email, the email address in field c1.

Hope this makes sense!

[EduTech]

Do you want every student in yr6 to only be able to email their mentor?

If not, you could setup an alias i.e. mentors@yourdomain.sch.uk and then forward that email onto all the mentors dealing with the yr6 intake.

If you dont want them to be able to email all mentors, maybe setup an alias for each mentor which forwards the emails onto the mentor under that alias.

[enjay]

@edutech - that wouldn't help, as when the Y7 replied, the email would go from their real address.

So long as the students and parents are happy, I don't see an issue with it - it isn't like you're making the information publicly available, anyway. This should be done using school email addresses, though, not hotmail ones (for Y7 and Y6 alike).

You could always have all the emails sent through the Tutors/Heads of Year though, that way the children's addresses would only be known to that one staff member...

[EduTech]

@edutech - that wouldn't help, as when the Y7 replied, the email would go from their real address.

Oh yeah