Adding parent/carer emails

Adding parent/carer emails using an MIS Integration

If you have opted to share parent emails through your Wonde MIS integration with Sparx, some parent/carer email addresses will be automatically added to Sparx (if that information is in your MIS).

By default, we add contacts for students who have the highest priority and parental responsibility in your MIS

It is quite likely that you have multiple contacts for your students in your MIS so, by default, we choose which contacts to send parent/carer emails to rather than adding them all. 

We add contacts who have Parental Responsibility, and the highest priority after that.

For example, for a student with the following 4 contacts, we would import the email address for Parent B and Parent D as they are the highest priority contacts who have Parental Responsibility:

• Parent A: priority = 1, parental responsibility flag = "NO
• Parent B: priority = 2, parental responsibility flag = "YES"
• Parent C: priority = 3, parental responsibility flag = "YES"
• Parent D: priority = 2, parental responsibility flag = "YES"

Alternatively, you can choose which priority levels to import

If you want to add further contacts to Sparx as well as those listed with Priority 1, then you can choose to import contacts with additional levels of priority. (They will still need to be tagged with Parental Responsibility.) To do this:

1. Go to School Settings > Parent Emails
2. Under the Parent/carer contacts priorities in MIS/SIS section, choose the Import contacts with specific priorities option
3. Finally, click Import next to the priority levels that you want us to import

When choosing contacts to add in this way you will need to decide if you want them to automatically receive parent/carer emails. We'd highly recommend you turn Emails on for future imports for all Priority 1 contacts but you may find it easier to manage whether additional contacts receive emails on a student-by-student basis. See the section below on Turning parent/carer emails off

Adding parent/carer emails in a school without an MIS integration

If you don't have an MIS integration then you can add parent/carer contacts using either

• The CSV upload process. Find out how to do this in the article Adding and updating classes/students (Using CSV) article.
• Manually using the steps below:

1. 1. Go to the Student Manager page or use the Search Students option in the top right of the screen to find the student you want to associate a parent/carer email address to.
   2. Go to the student's details and add email address/s as needed:

Viewing parent/carer contact emails that have already been added to Sparx

Go to Student Manager> Student>Details and scroll down to see the Parent/Carers section

Managing parent/carer email replies

If at least one teacher of a class has Send teacher emails marked as Yes, any replies to emails sent by Sparx to parents will be forwarded automatically to that/those teacher(s).

If no teachers linked to the class have Send teacher emails? marked as Yes, then the reply will instead be forwarded to the Sparx Leader. Sparx Leaders can contact schoolsupport@sparx.co.uk if they want to share any parental feedback or to nominate an alternative recipient. 

Turning parent/carer emails off or on

Our research has shown that parent or carer involvement has a significant impact on student learning and we feel it is a key part of the successful implementation of Sparx Maths at our schools. Schools that have parental emails enabled have an average (on time) completion rate 15% higher than those that don't.

If you still want to turn these emails off you can do so for an individual student or for all students in the following ways, or if you have already turned them off, you can turn them back on. 

For an individual student

 Go to the Student Manager page, select the student in question, and slide emails to Off or On:

For all students

Go to the School Settings page, select Parent Emails, and untick or tick the Parent Emails enabled box:

Stopping the import of parent email addresses to Sparx

• Turning parent/carer emails off in Sparx will not stop us from receiving them from your MIS if you have previously allowed us access to them, we just won't use them. 
• If your school does not intend to use parent emails longer term, it is better that we don't have data that we don't need. 
• If this is the case ask your Network Manager to change the data-sharing permissions in Wonde. Wonde provides a short video explaining how to do this:

Parent/carer email address and GDPR

In our experience, most schools follow the Information Commissioner's Office’s (ICO) position that classroom apps used for education come under the lawful basis of public task, with the school as a public authority acting under the Education Act 1999. The majority of schools share parent emails with us under public task or occasionally in the legitimate interest of the student.

We have provided some points below which may be useful regarding the parent emails function:

• Parent emails are provided by Sparx (as data processor) on behalf of the school (the data controller). As such, the school is effectively the sender of the emails.
• The provision of parent email addresses is optional and schools do not need to use our parent email function in order to use Sparx Maths effectively. You can change your preferences at any time.
• If you use an MIS integration we link directly to your MIS via our partner Wonde. As part of this, you (likely your Network Manager) have access to a Wonde portal so that they can easily see and control data that is shared to different applications that use the Wonde syncing tool.
• At the bottom of every parent email is a link that allows parents to manage their email preferences, so they can unsubscribe and opt-out at any time. We have found that this is a practical way for schools to manage engagement with parents. However, if you are relying on the legal basis of consent to provide parent emails, you must do this separately (on an informed, opt-in basis) and selectively share emails through Wonde as mentioned above.
• There is a link to our Privacy Notice for Schools on every parent email. This contains a specific section detailing exactly what personal information we gather or create, and how it is used (see in particular the section “Personal information relating to parents (Parent Data)”).
• Our research has shown that parent or carer involvement has a significant impact on student learning and we feel it is a key part of the successful implementation of Sparx Maths at our schools. Schools that have parental emails enabled have an average (on time) completion rate of 15% higher than those who don't. 
• If you have an exceptional circumstance, e.g. a safeguarding concern, regarding parent emails please contact schoolsupport@sparx.co.uk for further advice.