We've been playing with the email notifications in the medical centre and were somewhat unimpressed.
As it's set up, all notifications go to parents at a single set time each day, so either you set it before the end of the school day so parents can discuss it at pick up, and some don't get it until the next day if they are after that time, or you set it for after the end of the day and parents get a fairly late notification.
If a child is poorly during the day, sees the nurse, who logs a visit, that notification could not go until much later. But the child might return and the nurse decide they need to go home. The parent could collect the child well before any notification goes to them.
While not having immediate notifications is useful for when someone puts something against the wrong child, it would be better if they could go on the hour every hour. Perhaps allowing us to set the send frequency for a range of options:
15 mins
30 mins
60 mins
120 mins
Daily
Also, there's currently options for Medication and for Diary, but it seems to suggest that if a pupil had both logged for the same issue, the parent would get two emails, so improving it to link that up into a single email would be good.
Thank you for raising this with us.
We’re currently reviewing how parental notifications are handled and would really value your feedback.
For parental notifications, the current system sends one email at the end of the day. This helps reduce the number of emails parents receive, as the system tracks any updates and sends a single notification with the most up-to-date information. It also allows time for users to correct any errors before parents are notified.
We’re exploring options to make notifications more flexible and timely. Our proposed changes include:
Daily notifications (as currently used)
Hourly notifications, allowing time for corrections
Immediate notifications for individual records, useful in urgent cases (e.g. a head injury where parents did not answer a phone call)
These options would be configurable, so each school could choose what works best for them. The immediate notification option would be available alongside either the daily or hourly setting. If hourly or immediate notifications are used, parents would receive additional alerts if the record is later updated.
We’d love to hear your thoughts on these options - would these options work better than the existing functionality?
Medical reports should go out to parents immediately - not at a set time.