Automated Texts to Parents for Absences

Parents/Guardians who have registered on the Communications Portal and have an actively linked students will get a text message notifying them of absences from lessons for their linked student. This document is intended to provide a detailed view into the control of the service.

Criteria

Messages will be sent for only the first lesson of the day where the student is marked O (absent). Text messages will not be sent for any further absences for that day
Messages will not be sent until approximately 20 minutes after the end of the lesson.
Parent/guardian must be registered on the Communications Portal and the student must be linked and Active (not suspended)
On the Staff Portal there is a 'hide full attendance' selection on the Comms Portal page for each parent/guardian. This must not be selected for them to receive text message notifications.
Parent/guarding must have a mobile number on the Communications Portal
Register must have been marked before the end of the lesson
Must be an active 16-19 student (student status C__)

Message

Sample Text Message

Student STE04049635 did not attend their lesson today at 10:10. If this is a genuine absence, please notify us here: https://tinyurl.com/runabs

The link in the text message will redirect the user to https://communications.runshaw.ac.uk/recordabsencelink.aspx. If the user is not already logged in, they will be redirected to the login page.
If the user has only one active student linked, they will be redirected to the record an absence page for that single student once logged in.
If the user has multiple active students linked, they will be redirected to a page asking them to select which student they would like to report an absence for before being redirected again to the record an absence page for that single student.
A pastoral log will be recorded for each text sent (multiple logs will be added for students where they have more than one active parent/guardian registered on the Communications Portal.

Unsubscribing

Should a parent/guarding not wish to receive such messages, they can remove their mobile number from the parent portal. There contact details will still be available via the Student's contacts if they have been recorded.

Blocks

Parents with 'blocks' (can contact disabled) will still receive text message notifications of absences as student contacts is a separate dataset to comms portal contacts.

To block parents from receiving these notifications one or more of the following must be considered:

Suspend comms portal account
Remove mobile number from comms portal account (parent/guardian will have option to re-add this)
Use the 'Hide Attendance Data' flag (Staff Portal > Student Profile > Comms Portal Parents) - select 'Hide Attendance Data' on the relevant contact then press 'Save' (some of the more detailed attendance data and absence data will become unavailable for them on their portal)