Parent portal will help families keep up to date

Primary and secondary school families in Barrhead and Neilston can now sign up to a new service that aims to offer a window into their child’s education.

The parentsportal.scot link is an online portal from East Renfrewshire Council and is designed to create a digital relationship between pupils, parents/carers and schools and replace the traditional letter in a school bag.

It has been developed in a bid to improve the way schools engage with parents and carers and reduce the number of paper transactions.

It aims to gives parents and carers online access to a range of school services, all through their own personal device, local authority bosses say.

The launch of the first phase of this digital provision has supported communication between families and schools during the challenging Covid- 19 pandemic enabling schools to stay in touch with parents.

Parents can sign in using a secure online account through mygov. scot and view information about their child’s school and education.

It will allow the user to view school calendar and events; view a child’s timetable for pupils in secondary school; view a child’s attendance; complete the annual data check process electronically; update child and family details at any time; access online school payments linking to ParentPay and access a child’s report card online.

Councillor Paul O’Kane, Convener for Education and Equalities, said: “Parentsportal. scot is an exciting new initiative which aims to create an online relationship between parents, carers, pupils and schools through a secure digital account.

“We know that family life is busy, so the portal allows them to engage with the school in a whole new way whether it’s by keeping personal details updated or accessing online school payments all in one place at a time which suits them.

“Further enhancements will add more features to the system including absence reporting and links to parent’s night booking systems so I would encourage every family with a digital device to sign up and get involved.”

 For access to parents portal. scot, visit www. east renfrewshire. gov. uk/ parentsportal