Staff and student with the same name

[enjay]

We have a student and a teacher who have the same name (with a minor spelling difference in the surname). I have changed the student's name to read "Fred Bloggs (STUDENT)" in the email address book, is there anything else I can do other than tell staff LOTS to be careful when sending emails? As I also share a name with a colleague, I know how many times staff get it wrong.

 

I'm tempted to ask for the student's password so we can get in and retrieve emails more easily when (note, when not if!) they are sent in error. Am I "allowed" to ask that?

[hardtailstar]

We have a student and a teacher who have the same name (with a minor spelling difference in the surname). I have changed the student's name to read "Fred Bloggs (STUDENT)" in the email address book, is there anything else I can do other than tell staff LOTS to be careful when sending emails? As I also share a name with a colleague, I know how many times staff get it wrong.

 

I'm tempted to ask for the student's password so we can get in and retrieve emails more easily when (note, when not if!) they are sent in error. Am I "allowed" to ask that?

 

We use their username as name in address book so people cant get confused. So 16BloggsJ would be 16BloggsJ under the name.

 

All students start with the year their cohort year started so different to staff who are surname.initial

 

Seems to work.

 

Just need to educate on Groups!!

[Norphy]

All of our students have "STUDENT - " in their displaynames as well. Makes it clear in the address book that this person is a student and that if they send a dodgy email to someone outside of the organisation, they recipient knows it's not come from a member of staff.

[round2it]

add a mail tip for the user so a message is displayed when they try and send an email to the student

[HPlum78]

@student.xx.xx for student addresses here.

[enjay]

add a mail tip for the user so a message is displayed when they try and send an email to the student

 

I like that, how do you do it?

[enjay]

We use their username as name in address book so people cant get confused. So 16BloggsJ would be 16BloggsJ under the name.

 

Do staff not complain about not knowing which cohort is which, and how to tell John Bloggs from Joe Bloggs? Which reminds me, there's also a student in the same year group as this new student who has the same forrename initial and surname!

[Steve21]

Always have them separate imho, Staff we have as initial surname (but any combo, first+last, intitial+last, last+initial etc etc at different schools in the past)

 

Students again always a similar theme, yearofentry+surname+initital, or surname+initial+yearofentry etc etc depending on how the school was originally.

 

The amount of times we find issues with schools that have students without things like years/numbers mixing up two students with same name, even them logging on wrong, or staff to student emails etc

 

I honestly don't see why anyone has students without some indication of year etc on it For such a simple add it fixes a lot of issues overall

 

Steve

[enjay]

I honestly don't see why anyone has students without some indication of year etc on it

 

Didn't BECTA (showing my age now!) say email addresses shouldn't indicate a student's age?

[round2it]

I like that, how do you do it?

 

 

create a rule

select more options button

look for policy tip

[paulkerton]

I honestly don't see why anyone has students without some indication of year etc on it For such a simple add it fixes a lot of issues overall

 

Migh that count as PII now, as it is a piece of information that can be used to help identify that specific individual?

 

So a random Jbloggs1, Jbloggs2, Jbloggs3 wouldn't do so, as it wouldn't single them out as such, but 19JBloggs would identify that as a specific JBloggs in your 2019 cohort.

I'd avoid it, personally.

[hardtailstar]

Do staff not complain about not knowing which cohort is which, and how to tell John Bloggs from Joe Bloggs? Which reminds me, there's also a student in the same year group as this new student who has the same forrename initial and surname!

 

Nope as we educate the staff on that one! If there is two who start at the same time then its 16BloggsJohn and 16BloggsJoe. If Joe Bloggs starts mid year then his is 16BloggsJoe and John would be 16BloggsJ.

 

All staff that teach a pupil are sent an email when the pupil starts mid year with what their username/email is.

[Steve21]

Didn't BECTA (showing my age now!) say email addresses shouldn't indicate a student's age?

 

I'm guessing you're referring to people able to identify people from outside the school? Location/Gender etc?

 

Never seen one that says you can't use Year Groups in, would be interested to see if this is the case as never know a school not to use it

 

Steve

[FN-GM]

add a mail tip for the user so a message is displayed when they try and send an email to the student

 

Only works on Outlook mail clients.

[Steve21]

Didn't BECTA (showing my age now!) say email addresses shouldn't indicate a student's age?

 

There we go, dug out the old Next Gen/Becta one I have 2010 and it says:

 

A key consideration for educational settings is conventions for email addressing careful consideration should be given to the format of email addresses to reduce the risk of unsolicited attention directed towards individual pupils from people outside the learning setting.

 

For example, if individual pupil addresses were created in a format such as firstname.lastname @ schoolname.geographicallocation.sch.uk, there is a risk of people from outside the school being able to guess a valid email address and hence contact pupils direct. This is reduced if a non-specific convention is used, such as a combination of letters and numbers.

 

Which is more about using the specific names/identifying gender with location etc.

 

But again, that is an olllld one So happy to be put right if there is something updated!

 

Steve

[round2it]

mail tips work in outlook online if sending to groups so not sure about individual students

 

look in the exchange online centre under groups and you can see the mail tip section

[Protec]

Just have it where the students have the intake year and staff don't. This means that the staff accounts can't be the same as the student ones.

[enjay]

Just have it where the students have the intake year and staff don't. This means that the staff accounts can't be the same as the student ones.

 

I don't fancy renaming all my student logins/email addresses and changing the GAL format for everyone, just because of this instance. Maybe I'll think differently after a few data breaches and hastily deleted emails!

[Steve21]

I don't fancy renaming all my student logins/email addresses and changing the GAL format for everyone, just because of this instance. Maybe I'll think differently after a few data breaches and hastily deleted emails!

 

Just on a side note, as I missed that line originally:

 

I'm tempted to ask for the student's password so we can get in and retrieve emails more easily when (note, when not if!) they are sent in error. Am I "allowed" to ask that?

 

While you could ask them, it'd be a lot better to agree with the "school/management" that you could access student mailboxes, and then set yourself up with permissions to "open the mailbox". That way no password required (e.g. if it's changed), and they can't use it as any excuse if they have issues SIR BROKE IT!!!

 

The other option, would be putting some kind of transport rule for approvals on that students account, for staff->him emails, but obviously that would be a pain for the "approver" depending how many emails your staff send kids directly?

 

Steve

[caffrey]

Student surnames are all uppercase here, also the profile photo is set to a specific image for students that they can't change (Google) And different colours depending on account status

Student account logins are named differently too

[bobsmith]

obviously not a fix for this particular case - but I've used candidate number or admission number for all student email addresses in each school I've worked at.

 

Neither number has any meaning outside of the school - they are only unique within the bounds of the school.

 

Staff have actual names and recently we added title "Mr, Mrs, Dr etc" so it's bloody hard to mix the staff and kids up - and two john smiths would have completely different email addresses anyway.

 

Display name is still the students's name so you can check you've got the right kid.

[enjay]

Staff have actual names and recently we added title "Mr, Mrs, Dr etc" so it's bloody hard to mix the staff and kids up

 

We had that at a previous school, with "Mr" in the first name field. Worked beautifully until GMail changed how it truncates names in conversation threads then suddenly we all had Inboxesa full of threads which looked like "Mr, Mr, Mrs, Miss, Mr, Mr, Mr" which wasn't very user-friendly!

 

I know some staff would like it that way where I work. Certainly, it clanged a little when a student emailed me and addressed me by my first name.

[enjay]

look for policy tip

 

Are policy tips the things which pop up above the "to" box showing people's Out of Office messages? I'm not sure those are visible enough really. Something you actually had to click on to confirm you wanted to email the student would be better.

[enjay]

While you could ask them, it'd be a lot better to agree with the "school/management" that you could access student mailboxes, and then set yourself up with permissions to "open the mailbox". That way no password required (e.g. if it's changed), and they can't use it as any excuse if they have issues SIR BROKE IT!!!

 

I reckon we'd still be open to "I didn't get the email, Sir must have deleted it".

 

The other option, would be putting some kind of transport rule for approvals on that students account, for staff->him emails, but obviously that would be a pain for the "approver" depending how many emails your staff send kids directly?

I don't think there is much direct email to individual students, as long as G Classroom and dist list emails didn't go through moderation, it might be do-able.

[LeMarchand]

Take a leaf out of the public school playbook and append senior/junior, major/minor or the very posh public school playbook and use Max(imus)/Min(imus)? Edited July 8, 2020 by LeMarchand