How do you inform staff about concerns about students

[NewFormz]

Our staff currently love to send all staff emails to inform people about concerns about students. This includes things such as students who have illnesses, behaviour issues, problems at home, dealing with bereavement, etc.

 

I moan at staff about this and informed them it is not appropriate to send this type of information as it goes to everyone in the school. The majority of staff do not need to know if a student is having problems at home and also feel this breaks all kinds of data protection rules.

 

I have suggested if there is a concern that staff only email the students teachers and support staff that need this kind of information or that they add a note to sims and then send an email saying if you know this student to check the notes. This has fallen on deaf ears and has had no effect.

 

Our healthcare coordinator has also told me that some of the emails she sends about students medical conditions must go to all staff to inform them of conditions. This is a tricky one as I can see where she is coming from but if I saw a student having a seizure I'm not going to remember an email from months ago or know the student's name, I'll just get a first aider asap.

 

Can any one confirm if sending this kind of information is breaking any DP rules and if so how best to handle it. We have a new Business manager who is now in charge of DP and I want to go to her with my concerns and I know her first question will be what do other schools do.

 

Any comments would be appreciated.

[bald_pig]

information goes to safeguarding officer or head of year as appropriate, then they pass the relevant info on to teachers who teach said pupil.

[elsiegee40]

If there is a concern about a student then it goes direct to the DSL (assuming it is a Safeguarding concern) and dies not get shared with everyone else UNLESS the DSL decides to share it.

 

If it's just a concern about lack of homework, making sure student gets to Room X at a specific time or whatever then it's up to the teacher/subject leader

Edited July 6, 2017 by elsiegee40

[witch]

Our teachers will share fairly minor concerns with the whole school - especially if it is a child who anybody might encounter. They limit it to something like "Tommy has issues today and may be angry..."

Anything more serious is logged on to My Concern (which has really changed the reporting for the better - everything is in one place and can be accessed by all teachers at any time) and the Pastoral support person is responsible for dealing with it -the safeguarding officer gets all info logged on My Concern automatically.

There is a line to be drawn between a "heads-up" - which I have always maintained that is important for people like me to see - I encounter the children all around the school and it is very useful to have a bit of knowledge about them, and a data protection issue.

I think the idea of logging stuff and sending a link to the staff concerned is a good idea.

[DGardiner]

any concerns here are put into CPOMS and the DSL deals with anything else including deciding who needs to know, emails aren't the place for it especially all staff mailing lists

[NewFormz]

Thanks everyone.

 

I'm going to raise this with the relevant staff and pass on the suggestions.

[HBPS]

all CP is logged in to CPOMS

[timbo343]

I set up a spiceworks server for this, changed a few text bits for menus and it works great.

[pete]

We have many mailing lists with various levels of granularity. However, people aren't great at using the appropriate list and the S/N ratio is a bit rubbish.

[Oaktech]

We use MyConcern for the proper issues and the person who deals with myconcern, usually the DSL will email everyone if they consider it is something we should all know about. That is usually something going on that might impact on their behaviour around the school when they aren't with their class teacher. MDSA's get a daily briefing before lunchtime that sounds like the plot of East Enders. Edited July 7, 2017 by Oaktech

[enjay]

On related topic, we have policy here not to name the student in the subject line or first few words of an email. Students often see teachers' inboxes (daily notices are emailed and projected) so we ensure a student or their friends won't know an email has been sent about them.

[Oaktech]

On related topic, we have policy here not to name the student in the subject line or first few words of an email. Students often see teachers' inboxes (daily notices are emailed and projected) so we ensure a student or their friends won't know an email has been sent about them.

 

Always just initials here.