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intermediate ⏱️ 15 min read

Learner Support, Behaviour, Governance and the Guardian Portal

Assign teachers to classes and subjects, roll out teaching scope safely, run learner support cases and accommodations, record behaviour, manage the governing body, move ECD children into Grade R with guardian consent, give parents a portal link and work offline in skillSYMS Desktop.

For: Administrators Training Providers
On this page(18 sections)

Summary

Once your school is set up in Schools & ECD (EducationOS), the next layer is the work around the register: who teaches what, learners who need support, behaviour, the governing body, early learning, and what parents can see. This guide covers each of them, and the offline School screen in skillSYMS Desktop for teachers who take registers and capture marks with no connection.

What this module does not do:

  • Nothing is emailed or sent to parents automatically. Staff create a portal link and copy it to the parent themselves, for example by SMS, WhatsApp or email.
  • Nothing is sent to the DBE, a provincial education department or LURITS.
  • Parents do not get a login. The guardian portal is a private link, not an account.

If your school is not set up yet, start with Set Up Your School in skillSYMS.

Who This Guide Is For

  • Principals and school administrators who manage staff access and the guardian portal
  • Support coordinators, counsellors and school-based support team members
  • Teachers who take registers, capture marks and record behaviour
  • SGB secretaries and chairpersons
  • ECD practitioners and centre managers preparing children for Grade R

Prerequisites

Before you begin, ensure you have:

  • A school with grades, classes, subjects and enrolled learners (see Set Up Your School in skillSYMS)
  • Staff with skillSYMS accounts in your workspace, so they can be given teaching assignments
  • Guardians linked to learners, with the right Legal authority and May give consent settings
  • For offline work: skillSYMS Desktop installed and signed in once while online, on a trusted device

Step 1: Add Teaching Assignments

Teaching assignments record who teaches what. They drive My classes, the offline packs a teacher can download and, when switched on, teaching scope.

  1. In the sidebar, go to Learners → Schools & ECD, then open the Settings tab (/sdp/education/settings).
  2. Under Teaching assignments, choose the school and year, then click + Assignment.
  3. Choose the Staff member, their Role (for example register teacher, subject teacher, grade head, support coordinator or ECD practitioner) and the Scope: the whole school, a grade, a class or one subject.
  4. Tick May read learner support cases at this school only for staff who work on support cases. Only a support coordinator can grant this.
  5. Click Add.

To remove someone, click End on their assignment. From that day they are no longer assigned. A subject offered to a whole grade reaches the register of every class in that grade.

Step 2: Roll Out Teaching Scope Safely

Teaching scope on the Settings tab controls whether teachers can capture registers and marks outside their assignments:

SettingWhat happens
OffAny teacher may capture for any class
ObserveCaptures are allowed, but each one outside an assignment is logged. This is the default
EnforceTeachers capture only for the classes and subjects they are assigned to

Staff who manage learners or the school structure are never restricted by scope.

  1. Leave scope on Observe while you add assignments.
  2. Watch Captures outside assignments (observe log) at the bottom of Settings for a couple of weeks. Each entry is a capture that Enforce would have refused, which usually means a missing assignment.
  3. Add the missing assignments until the log stays quiet.
  4. Choose Enforce and click Save settings.

If captures outside assignments were logged in the last 14 days, skillSYMS warns you before enforcing and tells you how many would now be refused. You can review the log, or click Enforce anyway. Watching the log first stops a teacher being locked out of their own register on the first morning.

Step 3: Use My Classes (Teachers)

Open the My classes tab (/sdp/education/my-classes).

  • Register classes lists your classes with the number of learners. A class shows Register not taken today until the day’s register is saved. Click a class to go to Attendance.
  • Subjects lists your subjects with learners, open tasks and the next due date, and how many learners have accommodations.
  • Click a subject to see Accommodations: what to do for which learner in assessments, for example extra time or a reader. The reason is held by the support team and is not shown to teachers.

If the lists are empty, ask your school administrator to add a teaching assignment for you.

Step 4: Open a Learner Support Case

Support cases are confidential. The case list shows that a case exists; only the people working on it can open it.

  1. Open the Learner support tab (/sdp/education/support) and choose the school.
  2. Click + Open a case and choose the Learner, Type of support (for example academic, language, psychosocial or health), the Level (Level 1 teacher, Level 2 school support team or Level 3 district support team), a confidential Summary and the First review date.
  3. Click Open case. You are added as the case lead, and the case gets a reference.

Opening a case records who opened it. Every time someone opens the full case, that access is logged first.

Step 5: Work the Case: Members, Entries, Referrals and Accommodations

Select a case to open it. Then:

  1. Add members (support coordinators): click + Member, choose the Staff member and a Role (lead, member or observer). Only members, support coordinators and staff whose assignment allows support records can open the case.
  2. Record the work: use + intervention (with Responsible, Starts and Ends), + review (with Next review), + note or + need.
  3. Refer: click + referral, give a Title and choose Referred to, for example the school-based support team, district-based support team, psychologist, social worker, therapist, clinic, SAPS or DSD.
  4. Approve an accommodation (support coordinators): click + Accommodation, choose the Type (for example extra time, reader, scribe or separate venue), write the Instruction for staff, choose what it Applies to and, if needed, Until. Write what to do, not why. Teachers see the instruction only, on My classes.
  5. Close the case: click Close case and give a Reason. Active accommodations end when the case closes. Only a support coordinator can reopen a closed case.

Step 6: Record Behaviour

  1. Open the Behaviour tab (/sdp/education/behaviour) and choose the School, Year and Class.
  2. Click + Record and choose the Learner and Category (merits, demerits and incidents, each with its points).
  3. Complete the Date, Where, What happened, Consequence and, for a detention, the Detention date. An incident needs a factual description.
  4. Click Record.

The Class summary shows merit points, demerit points and incidents per learner. To correct a record, click Withdraw and give a reason. The record stays, marked withdrawn.

What happened stays on staff screens. Guardians with a portal link see the category, date and consequence only.

Step 7: Run the Governing Body

  1. Open the Governance tab (/sdp/education/governance), choose the school and click + Body. Choose the Type (School Governing Body, School Management Team, a committee or the Representative Council of Learners) and a Name.
  2. Select the body and click + Member for each member: Full name, Category (parent, educator, non-educator, learner, principal, co-opted and so on), Office, Email, Elected on and Term starts. Co-opted members have no vote.
  3. Read the Composition notice. For an SGB it checks that there is one more parent member than all the other voting members (Schools Act, section 23(9)). This is a guide, not a block. The chairperson of an SGB must be a parent member.
  4. Click + Meeting to schedule one: Title, Type, Date, Time and Venue.
  5. Before the meeting, click Pack beside it. The meeting pack opens for printing, with the agenda, members and quorum, declarations of interest, previous minutes, open actions and resolutions.
  6. After the meeting, click Record. Tick who was present, add the Minutes, set the Status, and record any Resolution passed and the Action from the resolution.
  7. Use + Declaration for declarations of interest and + Action for action items, and Mark done when an action is complete.

The body also shows Terms ending within 90 days. Once minutes are approved, they are final.

Step 8: Record ECD Observations and Prepare the Move to Grade R

Observations

  1. Open the Early learning tab (/sdp/education/ecd) and choose the ECD centre, Year and Child.
  2. Click + Observation and choose the Area and Level (not yet observed, emerging, developing or achieving). Describe What you saw, the Activity / routine and the Date.
  3. Click Save. The Development profile shows the latest level and trend for each area.

Observations are recorded for children enrolled at an ECD centre, and cannot be dated in the future.

Transition to Grade R

  1. Choose the child and click Prepare school transition.
  2. Choose the Receiving school. If the school is not in your workspace, choose Another school (print only) and enter the Other school name. Confirm the Starting year and click Prepare.
  3. Under Transitions, click Record guardian consent. Choose the guardian who gave consent and the Date. Only a linked guardian marked May give consent can be chosen.
  4. For a school in your workspace, click Accept into school and enter the Admission date. The same child record is enrolled in Grade R. No new learner is created.
  5. For a school outside your workspace, click Print and give the package to the family.

The package holds the child’s development profile and attendance. If the centre has support in place, the package says only that support exists and asks the school to talk to the family. Support details are never included.

Step 9: Turn On the Guardian Portal

The guardian portal is off until you switch it on.

  1. Open the Settings tab.
  2. Tick Guardian portal.
  3. Set Guardian link lifetime (days), how long each link works.
  4. Click Save settings.
  1. Open the Learners tab and click the learner.
  2. Under Guardians, click Portal link beside the guardian.
  3. Confirm Create link. The link is shown once, with the date it expires. Copy it now.
  4. Send it to the guardian yourself. skillSYMS does not send it.

Each guardian has one link. Creating a new link stops the old one working, so use it when a link is lost or shared by mistake.

With the link, a guardian sees the child’s school, grade and class, attendance for the year, behaviour (category, date and consequence), upcoming assessment tasks and released reports. The portal never shows support cases, accommodations, restriction notes, behaviour descriptions or identity numbers. An expired or replaced link shows This link is not valid, with a request to ask the school for a new one.

Step 11: Release Reports to Guardians

  1. Open the Reports tab and choose the School, Year and Report (Term 1 to 4, or Final).
  2. Click Show reports and check them.
  3. Click Release to guardians and confirm.

Releasing makes that report visible to every guardian with a portal link at that school. It cannot be undone. Until a report is released, guardians cannot see it.

Step 12: Take Registers and Capture Marks Offline in skillSYMS Desktop

  1. On skillsyms.com, go to Me → Offline Packs (/sdp/offline).
  2. Under Take something offline, click Make available offline on:
    • School class register: the daily register for one class, with names and the marks for the last five and next nine days
    • Assessment task marks: marks for one assessment task, with names and any marks already captured
  3. Choose the class or task. Teachers see the classes and tasks from their assignments; staff who manage the whole school see every class.
  4. Open skillSYMS Desktop once while online so it downloads the packs.
  5. In the desktop app, open School from the links above the page title. Under Daily register, choose the Class and Date and mark each learner, or use Mark everyone unmarked present. Under Marks, choose the Assessment task and capture the marks.
  6. Everything is saved on the computer and synced when you are back online.

If someone changed the same mark online in the meantime, the Sync Centre shows both versions for an administrator to decide. Nothing is overwritten.

If you don’t see School in the desktop app, update skillSYMS Desktop. The School screen needs a desktop version that includes it. Registers and marks cannot yet be taken offline in a web browser.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

  1. Switching straight to Enforce: with no assignments, skillSYMS refuses (“No teaching assignments exist yet”). With captures logged outside assignments in the last 14 days, it warns you that they would now be refused. Add assignments and watch the observe log first.
  2. “You are not assigned to this class or subject”: scope is on Enforce and the teacher has no assignment for that class or subject. Add the assignment on Settings.
  3. “Only members of this support case can open it”: ask the support coordinator to add you as a member.
  4. Writing reasons into accommodations: teachers see the instruction. Keep diagnoses and reasons in the case record.
  5. Recording an incident with no description, or a future date: an incident needs a factual description, and behaviour records cannot be dated in the future.
  6. Making a non-parent the SGB chairperson: refused. The chairperson of a school governing body must be a parent member.
  7. Accepting a transition before consent: “Record guardian consent first.” If no guardian can be chosen, update the guardian on the learner record so that May give consent is ticked.
  8. Trying to accept a print-only package: a package for a school outside your workspace cannot be accepted. Print it for the family.
  9. “The guardian portal is switched off for this workspace”: tick Guardian portal on Settings and save.
  10. Issuing a link to someone without authority: refused for a guardian whose Legal authority is none, for a guardian recorded as not receiving results, and for a guardianship that has ended.
  11. Expecting parents to be emailed: nothing is sent. Copy the link when it is shown, because it cannot be shown again.
  12. Forgetting to release reports: a report that has not been released does not appear in the portal.

Verification Checklist

Before relying on these features, verify:

  • Every teacher has at least one teaching assignment and sees their classes on My classes
  • The observe log has been reviewed before Enforce was switched on
  • Support case members are the right people, and accommodations contain instructions, not reasons
  • SGB composition shows no warning, and the chairperson is a parent member
  • ECD transitions show guardian consent before acceptance
  • Guardian portal is ticked, and a test link opened in a private browser window shows the child
  • The term’s reports were released after checking
  • A teacher has opened School in skillSYMS Desktop and a test register synced

Next Steps

What's new in skillSYMS

  1. MicroQuests in the browser, in the app and by email
    • skillsyms.com/learn: take LearnChat MicroQuests in any browser with buttons instead of chat replies. You get the same quests, wallet, progress and certificates as on WhatsApp
    • Learn by email: anyone can ask for a personal learning link on skillsyms.com/learn. There's no account and no password, and the link keeps you signed in on that device for 30 days
    + 6 more
  2. Schools & Early Learning (alpha): grades, registers, marks, promotion and SA-SAMS import
    • Learners → Schools & ECD: set up a school or ECD centre under its provincial department, with grades, classes and subjects for each academic year
    • Choose your institution type (primary, secondary, combined, independent, ECD centre and more) to switch on the matching pack
    + 12 more
  3. Schools & Early Learning: learner support, behaviour, governance, ECD development and a guardian portal
    • My classes: a teacher's registers still to take today, open assessment tasks and which learners need accommodations
    • Teaching assignments and teaching scope: start by observing captures outside a teacher's classes, then limit teachers to their own classes and subjects
    + 10 more
Full changelog

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