What should we know about parent email addresses and GDPR?

Sending parent emails has a positive impact on student success

At Sparx Learning, we have discovered that parent or carer involvement plays a crucial role in students' success. 

Our findings show that when parents or carers receive a Sparx email during the homework week, there is a 15% higher completion rate for homework assignments by the deadline compared to those who did not receive the email. 

This indicates that when parents or carers are actively involved, it positively influences students' completion of their homework tasks.

Data from 1 million UK compulsory homework assignments collected between 06/09/2021 and 19/12/2021.

Research, such as the study conducted by Jay, Rose, and Simmons in 2018 titled 'Why Is Parental Involvement in Children’s Mathematics Learning Hard? Parental Perspectives on Their Role Supporting Children’s Learning', agrees that parental involvement has a significant impact on student learning.

We value the partnership between parents or carers and schools, and we strive to promote and support meaningful engagement to enhance student success with Sparx Maths. We encourage parents or carers to be actively involved in their child's mathematics learning journey, and we are committed to providing tools and resources that facilitate effective communication and collaboration between schools and families.

You don't have to share parent emails

The provision of parent email addresses is optional and you do not need to use our parent email function in order to use Sparx Maths effectively. You can change your preferences at any time via your Wonde portal. Please see our 'Turning parent emails off' section of our Adding parent/carer emails page for either individual students or whole school/s.

You can use parent's email addresses under a lawful basis other than consent

Parent emails are provided to Sparx (as data processor) by the school (the data controller). As such, the school is effectively the sender of the emails.

• As in our question on lawful basis for data processing (including parents' personal data), we have found that most schools are able to rely upon lawful bases other than consent, for example, public task (or legitimate interests for independent schools). This is because the school has uses the data for its public task to educate students or considers engaging parents (in that education) is in the legitimate interest of the student. If the school's Privacy Notice does not exclude sharing data with third parties under this basis, no consent is required
• We do ask that you notify parents you are going to start using Sparx Maths before the system starts sending emails. We have an article with a template letter and other ways to engage parents/carers.
• If you wish to seek consent from parents, once you have gathered consent, you can manage selective parent email sharing through the Wonde portal, please see a video on how to do this here under 'stopping the import of parent emails to Sparx'.

Parents can unsubscribe to emails at any time

• At the bottom of every parent email is a link which allows parents to manage their email preferences, so they can unsubscribe and opt-out at any time
• There is also 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)”) 

You can stop and start sending parent emails when you choose

• If you want to start sending parent emails, simply opt to start sharing parent email information with us through your Wonde portal
• If you have previously been sending emails but want to stop, opt-out of sharing parent email data through Wonde. Any subsequent homeworks set after you have opted out of sharing this data with us will not have associated parent contacts
• In cases you have emails enabled for your school but require email suppression for an individual student for welfare issues, you can suppress email to that parent through the teacher portal on the student manager page