Scottish schools’ parent/carer portal set to go live 

A new online service designed to transform communications between schools and parents and carers is about to be launched.

Parentsportal.scot is designed to replace the hit-and-miss practice of information being transmitted between the two via children’s schoolbags. Parents will have online access to a range of school-related services.

As well as providing information about their child’s education, the portal will ease transactions such as school trip payments and parent’s evening bookings.

The parent portal has been jointly developed by the Improvement Service (IS) and SEEMiS, the education information management provider.

“At the heart of the system is a secure online account which links each parent/carer to their child and education,” said a spokesperson.

North Lanarkshire and West Lothian councils will be the first to use the service, which is about to go live. The first phase will offer a range of services including placing requests. The range will be extended in future to include, among other things, a digitalised annual data check and absence reporting.

Parentsportal.scot will incorporate myaccount for the purposes of authenticating users, which was developed by IS and is used by Scottish authorities. It recently passed the milestone of 500,000 sign-ups.

FutureScot’s view: Parents and carers should be able to access more than just those features announced; crucially, access to their children’s programme of work, and homework in real-time, would better support them in their schoolwork and their teachers in teaching.