Guardians & Families
Where a parent portal account actually comes from: the guardian record, the link between an adult and a child, the second parent, the guardian with no email, the invitation nobody accepted — and then one login that carries three children, an activity feed across all of them, and one bill.
A pupil record is not a family
Every parent-facing screen in this product assumes something the school had to do first: link an adult to a child. That link is not administrative tidiness — it is what makes an invoice reach somebody, what makes a consent request find the right household, and what stops a guardian seeing a child who is not theirs. It is also where school data is most often quietly wrong: the father nobody recorded, the mother with no email address, the guardian who was invited in June and never accepted, the uncle who is the emergency contact but not the primary. This walkthrough follows the link itself — from the office that makes it, through the invitation it produces, to the account on the other side that carries two children, one activity feed and one bill.
On this page
Guardians are people, not fields on a pupil
The first design decision, and the one everything else follows from: a guardian is a record in their own right rather than three text boxes on a child’s form. That is why one adult can hold three children, why changing a phone number changes it everywhere, and why “how many families do we actually have” is a number this school can answer.
The guardian directory
Every adult the school holds a record for, with how many pupils each is linked to and whether they have a portal account. The two figures above it are not the same question and the gap between them is the school’s real reach: eight hundred and forty-two guardians, six hundred and ten with an account.
One guardian, and everything the link carries
Ngozi Okeke, and the two children she is linked to. Each link is its own object with its own relationship, its own primary flag and its own note — which is what lets one adult be the mother of one pupil and the emergency contact for another without either fact contaminating the other.
Ready to run your school on this?
Every screen in “Guardians are people, not fields on a pupil” is the live product, not a mockup. Create your school account, or have us walk you through it on a call.
The same link, from the child’s side
The office rarely starts from the guardian. It starts from a child — a form is being filled, a fee is being chased, a nurse needs to reach somebody now — and the same relationship has to be usable from that direction too.
One pupil, opened on the register
The pupil’s record as a viewer over the register, with their guardians on it: who they are, what relationship they hold, which is primary, and how to reach each of them. A record opens by URL, which is how a notification about a child takes you to that child rather than to a list of eleven hundred.
And inviting them, which is a separate decision
Linking a guardian and giving them an account are two different things, and keeping them separate is deliberate: a school often records a second parent long before it wants to invite them, and some guardians will never have an account at all. The register shows both states, per pupil, so neither is assumed.
See this on your own school’s data.
Every screen in “The same link, from the child’s side” is the live product, not a mockup. Create your school account, or have us walk you through it on a call.
The link that already knows their children
This is the first screen a guardian ever sees, and the one that decides whether a school’s parent portal is used or ignored. It has to work first time, on a phone, for somebody who has never heard of this system and will not ring the office to ask what their username is.
One link, and their children are on it
The page names the guardian and lists the wards they are linked to — which is both the reassurance that the link is genuinely theirs and the explanation of why they were written to at all. Loading the page is itself the email confirmation: the token could only have reached the address the school sent it to.
Set this up for your team.
Every screen in “The link that already knows their children” is the live product, not a mockup. Create your school account, or have us walk you through it on a call.
One login, however many children
The pay-off for treating a guardian as a record. A parent with two children at this school signs in once and sees both — not two accounts, not a school-issued code per child, not the arrangement most systems end up with because they attached the parent to the pupil rather than the other way round.
The morning view, across every ward
What matters today for both children, on one screen: attendance, anything outstanding, what is coming. A guardian with children in different year groups does not have to hold two mental models of the school.
Their children, and what the school holds about each
A card per ward: class, form teacher, attendance, standing, and the modules the school runs for them. This is the screen that makes the ward link visible to the person it is about — and the boundary is exactly the set of links the office made in step one.
And one feed across all of them
The thing a parent with three children actually wants and almost never gets: everything that happened today, to any of them, in one column. A mark, a behaviour point, an absence, a payment, a notice — merged, in time order, rather than filed under three separate children.
And one bill, for the family
The clearest consequence of the whole design: a guardian with two children owes one household’s worth of money and sees it in one place, per child, with what has been paid against each. A system that had attached the parent to the pupil would show them two unrelated accounts and let them work it out.
Ready to run your school on this?
Every screen in “One login, however many children” is the live product, not a mockup. Create your school account, or have us walk you through it on a call.
Run your whole school on one connected platform
Start with the base package, switch on the modules you need, and give every parent, student and staff member a single place to log in.