Perse parents give e-consent
Parents receive trip details by email and follow the links to complete online consent forms
The Perse School has started using web-based parental consent forms in a bid to dramatically reduce the workload on staff organising school trips and ventures. The new move has also been a hit with parents who can quickly complete forms online and not need to worry about remembering to send paper copies back to the school.
Parents receive emails containing details of a trip from the PersePost* system, and follow the links through to a secure online webspace where they can read further details and then complete the consent form. The system authenticates the parent and collects the electronic equivalent of a signature. The responses are all written to a data file which the school staff may easily access or download at any time to check who has (or has not) responded and to keep a permanent record of the parents' consent.
The forms themselves are easy to design and customise for specific trips using a 'form designer' tool built into the SchoolPost system. Templates can be saved to make it easy to simply copy and edit an existing form changing only the specific details for the current trip. Further enhancements coming soon will include the ability to automatically merge-in pupil-specific data from the MIS such as pupil name, formgroup and doctor's phone number to make it even easier for the parent to check/amend and confirm.
"The new electronic trip consent forms can definitely reduce the burden on staff organising a trip, and make it quicker and easier for parents to respond" said Paul Baker, Director of Educational Innovation at The Perse. "The response form system has also proved to be extremely useful for short surveys and replacing other paper reply slips, so we plan to extend its use as far as possible throughout our three schools."
* PersePost is the name used by The Perse School for its customised implementation of the SchoolPost system. SchoolPost is an email, SMS and web-based school communication system supplied by Cambridge-based software developer Empetus Limited. Further details are available here.