Family Connection

Parents to get portal on pupils 19 November 2006
By RACHEL GRUNWELLParents across the country will be able to go online to check on their children's test results and behaviour at school in the future.
The Education Ministry has confirmed it is looking at the website idea initiated by Auckland's Avondale College, which is to be copied by Australia in a $60 million project announced last week.

The ministry's manager of e-learning, Murray Brown, said it was developing the technical infrastructure to link all New Zealand schools so they could share data and access curriculum information online. Video conferencing between schools would also be possible.
Brown said parents could access their children's test results, truancy and detention statistics online.
"The challenge is the security side of it," said Brown. "There are some things that need to be kept private. How we manage that side of things will be a big question."
He could not put a timeframe or cost on the project.
Avondale College principal Brent Lewis said it was a "good thing" that the ministry was following in his school's footsteps and adopting The Family Connection scheme, in which parents could log on to a secure website and check their children's progress.


He said The Family Connection made the school accountable and kept parents more informed than receiving mid-year and end-of-year reports.
About 40% of parents at his school had been using the site since it started early this year and Lewis predicted that figure would rise to 75% next year. There had been 3300 hits.
"Many parents are using it to help them have meaningful conversations with their children," said Lewis.
He did not know whether truancy had dropped as a result of the website, as he had not yet compared figures.
In Australia, Victorian Premier Steve Bracks has revealed plans for an Australian-first - a school computer system that could allow parents to monitor their children's classrooms live online under a $60m initiative.
Bracks said the government was bringing in the system to every Victoria primary and secondary school. Parents would be able to check on what homework had been done, test results, attendance rates and could receive an automatic text, email or telephone notification if their child was absent without explanation.
The project was expected to be completed in three years.
Lewis said he was "astonished" at the cost of the Australian model. His school spent only $165 on The Family Connection. It has a piece of software that automatically updates the site every 24 hours.