SLG and Parental Reporting

[geeky]

Hey alllllll

Ok - we are looking to roll out SLG after christmass. Wanna find out what others have done and what problems they have come up against. What was your roll up plan? How did you distribute the user names and passwords? Did you provide some training for parents? What was the take up? Did you do it by year group? What were the problems with parents accessing? Technical support?

Please please tell me it alll went very smooth - not a problem in sight - parents all happy - and everyone lived happily ever after.

Geeky

[Ric_]

Some of things I've heard that need to be considered include:

* Login details should be handed to parents in person
* Need ID from parents to make sure they are who they say they are
* Need a procedure in place for when the login details are forgotten!
* Is your data up to date?
* Can both/either of the parents be allowed access to the data or are there any court injunctions or special circumstances?
* Is it worth trialling with a couple of classes first?

I'm sure Grumbledook will be along shortly with a link to some HUGE list of policies and best practice

[Sivadam]

It is ESSENTIAL that you have thoroughly checked your data for the Pupil Contacts that you are going to Provision before you proceed.
We provisioned one year group first and then gradually added the other others - after their data had been checked!
I provided an Online Guide which is on our School Websiste and also on our SLG Parent Homepage. I know that a number of schools have consulted this guide prior to going live with their parents.

[geeky]

Thanks guys. We have done the data cleansing bit - phew!!! So we think that is pretty much right.

Am with it re the password thing - thats gonna be a difficult one

How did peeps roll it out initially?
Have heard some sent out user name and password (sent separately) to all parents in the year group.

Others have sent a letter asking parents to register their interest and then sent a user name and password to those that registered.

Others have written to parents asking them into the school for a launch evening to give a demo and then distribute the user name and passwords on the evening.

G

[Domino]

You've also gotta make sure none of your incident reports have mentions of other peoples children (by name) in a parent viewable section.

For us that meant manually editing any of them to read 'another student' or similar.

[PhilNeal]

You can decide not to publish the details of an incident to avoid the naming problem.

[Sivadam]

We sent out two separate letters to all Natural Parents per year group we provisioned. One letter with user Name etc. One letter with Password.

You can also set the Date at which you wish Behaviour Incidents etc to be viewed from - so you would not necessarily have to clean previous data (though ideally you ought to!). You could set the Behaviour to show for Incidents after 1st January 2010. We did this last year - i.e. Incidents from 1st January 2009. You can also limit the Behaviour Fields that can be seen - i.e. you could hide the Comments Field (I assume that is the section that Phil has referred to above.).

[steve]

We are in the same boat and looking to get the capita hosted system implemented next year.

Whats the process behind issuing forgotten passwords - letter sent?
Which bit of the software generates the new password letter? SIMS or the AD provisioning software?

I have concerns I will be lumbered with managing the system when I have more than enough on my plate atm.

Can anyone reassure me its easy enough for non-technical people to manage day-to-day?

[Sivadam]

For forgotten passwords I get the parent to email me to request a change. I then respond via two separate emails after I have re-set it.

There is a standard report in SIMS which just pulls in the Fields required. You have to clone and edit this report to suit your own circumstances.

It is easy enough for Non-Technical staff. The amount of work is fairly minimal after the initial setting up - but I suppose that will depend on how your Parents react.

[vikpaw]

Are you rolling out for the first time? Straight to parents?
My plan is to start with just internal use and get teachers working on it first. Then on to parents, that way they will know what it is if parents have queries.
With parents:
Assume that take up wont necessarily be immediate and occur over a period of time.
Assume they will need more support than teachers do, and you know what they are like.
Some schools set up workshops during parents evenings, with a few machines ready to go, so parents can try it out and get logged in. Or, those with problems can come and get help in person.
There is a helpful document in another thread regarding the data prep' required, i think it is from Capita, but it also includes things to warn parents about i.e. your absence policy, time delays in marking etc. so they don't worry if they see their child is not marked in. Things like that, it's best to set expectations.
Probably worth also having a plan for dealing with their problems like password changes etc, or other difficulties and letting them know the turn around time (good to get an SLA in place )

EDIT: I'm not sure how it works, but i assume the process is family centric, so when you do it by year group, you only deal with the mailing points in that year group? So you start with the youngest year group, and that filters up. Or do you deal with each student individually and if the parents already have an account you ignore them...?

[Sivadam]

We took an opposite view.
We did not ask Parents to 'Opt-In'.
We interpreted the guidelines that ALL Parents had the right to view the data for their children online. So we provisioned ALL natural parents (via Year Groups). Once a Parent is provisioned I don't think that they can be provisioned again even if they have more than one pupil in the school. Even if they are, they can consolidate their accounts from within SLG. Therefore it is not really an issue!

We obviously provisioned Staff first and they were using it (some of 'em anyway!) for a couple of months before the first lot of parents were provisioned. It is staff that cause most problems here - not parents! And that is despite them having a Staff User Guide, which I produced for them! Then again, it is hard to tell exactly how many parents are actually using it!

[darkest_star]

HAs anyone set up a policy for gathering the parent details and distributing usernames and passwords etc?

We are just embarking on this and are interested in other experience / ideas.

[Greg]

Hey Sivadmin,

If you want to see how many parents (and who) are accessign SLG then, logged in as an Admin, you can go to the Parents page, Go to Site Actions | Site Settings and click on Site Usage Reports.

This will give you stats for the page you are on so you will see all the hits and visitors (including admin) to your parents site for the last 30 days.

darkest_star

Our schools are making SLG avaliable at parents evenings where they can give out account details to parents (after verifying ID) and getting them to sign a usage policy/SLA

They have all been trialling to staff with children at school or firendly parents before rollout.

Forgotten passwords are biggest issue for school, can they confirm that the request has come from the correct person. Our schools are looking to register a parents email address from meetiong above and will only reply to requests from this address, this can be managed via exchange and setup an SLG Issue email address at the school. SLA will have reset password policy (eg 9 - 4 term time only).

We have added some extra functionality to allow teachers to reset passwords for their classes and unlock accounts.

The main thing is the data quality in SIMS and the parental responsibility and court order tick boxes, eg, the notes fields for parents phone no's and emails are visible to parents and these are free text fields in SIMS.....

[Sivadam]

Hey Sivadmin,

If you want to see how many parents (and who) are accessign SLG then, logged in as an Admin, you can go to the Parents page, Go to Site Actions | Site Settings and click on Site Usage Reports.

This will give you stats for the page you are on so you will see all the hits and visitors (including admin) to your parents site for the last 30 days......

Unless this has changed recently then it will not work on Capita Hosted Service. We have wanted to try and get a site usage report for over a year now, since SLG2 first became available!

[Greg]

Unless this has changed recently then it will not work on Capita Hosted Service. We have wanted to try and get a site usage report for over a year now, since SLG2 first became available!

That's a shame, do you not have access to the Site Administration tab in Site Settings?

The Site Usage page can be made avaliable without giving access to the rest