Student Username???

[TechMonkey]

I'm curious; in what way is a student having their own name as a login a safeguarding risk?

 

I think the thought process was that username would be the same as email, so an outside stranger could email a pupil guessing at their name and if there is an intake year they would know roughly how old they are. Or it may have been the reverse, that a stranger would be able to guess a pupils email from knowing their name and initiate contact.

 

I inherited an awful format for Student usernames, which I wish we could change, but sadly there's no desire to do so at the time.

 

We use the first three letters of the surname followed by a random three digit number - so bon007 or hal900.

I think your school has possibly used WCBS PASS in the past, as that's the kind of Pupil code it generates and was the format we had here until a few years ago.

[Farloch]

I think the thought process was that username would be the same as email, so an outside stranger could email a pupil guessing at their name and if there is an intake year they would know roughly how old they are. Or it may have been the reverse, that a stranger would be able to guess a pupils email from knowing their name and initiate contact.

 

Now I can see some logic in that thought process. Possibly overthinking it but definitely some reasoned thought going on.

[forkies]

We have first 4 digits of surname, first initial and three numbers counting up. This was based off our old LA system when we moved away I wrote a script to continue it.

So Tom Smith would be smitt001 or if that existed smitt002 etc. This is students only. We put their year group in office field and organise them in ous and groups by year.

[Sylv3r]

17smith.j here. Any duplicates are 17smith.j1, 17smith.j2 etc.

[gomalley]

2digit year of entry followed by initial then surname, was the same as staff and had students who were there before staff having emails that looked like staff, couple of near misses where stuff was sent to the student and leadership agreed to me adding numbers!

[vikpaw]

Names and year of entry/graduation or worse still at one school - year they are in ([emoji51]!!) which meant changing annually are all best avoided.

 

There’s not much to be gained, not least because of the safeguarding argument. Practically, they are not the easiest to configure and lead to duplicates so no matter what clever trick there is to work it out you can’t be certain it’s the right one.

 

You could even argue they give away data privileged under DP/GDPR if you can infer the age.

 

The last few schools I’ve worked in we quickly moved to using the MIS student ID. Well over 10 years doing this.

 

Thankfully, at one school the SIMS admission number at one time was prefixed with an A which made them A07563 . We then made these the AD username, the email and library barcode. It was printed on their ID cards, labels in books for younger ones and staff could view them via reports or the intranet.

 

The A prefix really helps with sorting and Excel exports! It was many years before the earliest student with a numeric only ID would leave the school though.

 

In Engage we can custom build a PupilCode, used the same way but has the benefit of a longer prefix to differentiate between schools across a group.

 

Never really had any issues with students remembering them and internal email can show the name if required.

 

The best bit is they autogenerate in the MIS on student creation or import and so you just need to link them to AD and other systems and it’s a fairly hands off process.

Edited June 26, 2018 by vikpaw

[Sheridan]

We still use the entry year/initial/surname method here, so 17JSmith, duplicates mean use middles names or second character of first name so we might have 17JASmith and 17JBSmith

[smarties11]

We use the SIMS admission number including the leading zeros. Moved to this system 14 years ago when I started after inheriting a system that was based on year of entry and initials. Works well and you'll never have any duplicates!

 

EDIT: to aid students remembering their numbers initially, we ask them to write them in their planners at the beginning of Y7

Edited June 26, 2018 by smarties11

[angrycomputingteacher]

We do last name, first letter of first name and intake year so for John Smith it would be SmithJ15.

[vikpaw]

I guess there aren't that many duplicates being generated for you peeps using names or parts of, or the systems are automatically inserting the additional numbers or characters required.

It just really bugs me to have a system like that.

 

It's good training for teh 'real world'; every bank card will need to have a 4 (or sometimes 6) digit pin. Remembering a 6 char username isn't too hard. I don't think we ever had any major issues. Passwords, they would forget - even when it was 'ILoveLiverpool', but the username - rarely.

 

I would liken it to remembering phone numbers, but I doubt many kids these days can do that, least of all their own.

[jmak]

If I received an email from "0004631" I'm pretty sure I wouldn't open it. You might say "but it's from a school domain". I'd say "not worth the risk of finding out".

 

I don't believe that potentially giving away the yeargroup and therefore age of a child in an email address is a significant risk when it's only going to people they're choosing to communicate with. And by the end of the email, unless the child has missed the point, the recipient will know their name too.

 

By the time kids are sending externally emails from school accounts, they've been giving away loads of personal information through social media and email anyway.

 

Just my thoughts...

[brougham]

I think ours is way over complicated, but too late to change it now.

 

We've got year of birth, first letter first name, first two letters of last name, day of month, and then month of birth. So they appear as 01jbl0212 if it was Joe Bloggs born on 02/12/01 for example. Can safetly say we've never had a duplicate though

You've never run into Joe's twin siblings Joshua and Jessica Bloggs? I have for two sets of twins in different schools. Maybe it's a thing down here

[ADMaster]

Last name first initial last 4 of MIS number.

Joe Bloggs ID# 9871234

bloggsj1234

Never had a duplicate with this method even with twins.

Jane Bloggs ID#9871235

bloggsj1235

 

To the safeguarding aspect, some schools around here only do numbers too, advice from years ago. However I agree if they are to the point of giving out their email, they have probably given away much more on social media.

This method only gives away their name and not an approximate age.

I have rules setup that prevent younger students emailing outside of the domain, so that negates most of the safeguarding argument.

[subway_lunch]

first 4 characters surname first character first name id for multiple user with same name and Dfe institute number.

 

Example

 

blogj274.000

[speckytecky]

So, the students are actually numbered then; wasn't there something in religious texts about numbering

 

...

The last few schools I’ve worked in we quickly moved to using the MIS student ID. Well over 10 years doing this.

 

....

[6Foot2]

So, the students are actually numbered then; wasn't there something in religious texts about numbering

Some of our students are worthy of carrying 'that number'

 

[peej2k]

We are a primary school so we use

 

Year of leaving + initials + 4 random numbers

 

So for example

 

19JB3124 would be a Year 5 pupil called Jo Bloggs.

 

That way all they have to really memorise is a 4 digit number and their password, which will get them used to the Chip and PIN future they're going into

Edited June 27, 2018 by peej2k

[jmak]

get them used to the Chip and PIN future they're going into

 

Chip and PIN is old. NFC and fingerprint is already here.

 

Face recognition working properly on a domain is what I'm after.

[HPlum78]

Face recognition working properly on a domain is what I'm after.

 

Windows Hello for business is here as well....

Edited June 28, 2018 by HPlum78

[KevinB]

Becta

 

 

Cor, blast from the past there

[ColinP]

FirstName . Surname , put in an AD group for the year they leave / turn 13 , keeps it very easy for siginng in on offce 365 ect

[azureusnation]

Im changing all of our students this summer to the following:

 

Year of Entry - first initial - last name - random 2 digits

 

This is going across our trust to avoid duplicates as all of our schools are in one single AD domain.

[gmonks]

We use year of entry, initial and surname.

 

Example: this year they'll be 18JBloggs