Messaging guardians
Bulk email and SMS to guardians — who receives it, personalising each one, and what sends automatically.
Sidebar → Communication → Messaging. Write once, send to many guardians — by email as standard, or by SMS if your school has the add-on.
You may not see this tab. Messaging is switched on per school. If the sidebar shows it greyed out as Unavailable, ask us to enable it; there is no extra charge for the email version.
Announcements and Messaging do different jobs. An announcement is a notice that sits on the portals for people to come and read. A message goes out to guardians and lands in their inbox. Use announcements for things that stay true for a while, messaging for things people need to be told now.
Choosing who it goes to
Pick a class, a set of classes, or the whole school, and the system builds the recipient list from your roster. It shows you how many guardians are actually reachable before you send.
A guardian with no email address is not reachable. That is the usual reason the count is lower than the number of students. Students → filter by "Needs guardian" lists them, and it is worth fixing before a send that matters.
Personalising each message
A message can carry details that differ per student. Type the placeholder and each guardian receives their own child's figures:
| You type | They receive |
|---|---|
{student} |
the child's name |
{school} |
your school's name |
{term} {year} |
the current term and academic year |
{avg} {grade} {position} |
this term's average, grade and class position |
{attendance} |
attendance this term |
{billed} {paid} {balance} |
fees billed, paid and outstanding |
The score and fee figures are the same ones on the report card and the portal — they are not recalculated differently here.
Built-in templates cover the common sends (results are ready, fees outstanding). Start from one and edit it.
Preview before sending. The preview resolves the placeholders against a real
student, so you see what a guardian will actually receive rather than the raw
{avg}.
SMS
SMS is a paid add-on and is off unless your school has asked for it. Email messaging works without it.
If you have it, choose the channel when composing. SMS is charged in credits, bought in advance:
- Long messages cost more. The composer shows the segment count and the total credits before you send — an SMS splits into segments, and each segment is charged.
- If you run short mid-send, the rest pauses rather than failing. Top up and the paused messages go out on their own; you do not need to rewrite or resend them.
Two automatic sends can also use SMS instead of email if you have it — the "results are ready" message when you publish report cards, and arrears reminders. That choice is per automation, in Settings. Both fall back to email if the add-on is ever removed, so nothing silently stops going out.
What sends on its own
Two things message guardians without you composing anything:
- Publishing report cards tells guardians the results are ready. This fires at most once per term — unpublishing and republishing to correct a mark does not send it again. See Ending the term.
- Arrears reminders, if you have them switched on in Settings.
If a message does not arrive
Check the guardian has an email address on the student's record. This is the cause most of the time.
Ask them to check spam, particularly the first time your school sends.
Send history is on the Messaging tab. Each send shows what went out, to how many people, and anything that failed — so "did it go?" is a question you can answer yourself.