Guidance for LA – How to advise and train your schools on security and maintenance of Perspective Lite accounts

It is important for Local Authorities who make Perspective Lite available to some or all of their schools to also provide their schools with an appropriate understanding of the need to manage, review and close down Perspective Lite accounts where necessary.

Local Authorities should include in their training - and ideally regularly remind schools - that the school should remove access to members of staff in the school who either leave employment or no longer require access to (particularly at a pupil level) and that this is a requirement under the Data Protection Act 2018.

While LA cannot manage Perspective Lite accounts and the responsibility lies with the school to do so, as the body that is granting permissions to schools to view that data (via those Perspective Lite accounts) the LA has a responsibility to ensure that schools do understand the importance of account management.

It is suggested that this could be handled in the following ways:

• Inclusion within initial/refresher training for schools
• Inclusion within any local training documentation
• At least annual email reminders (ideally towards the end of the academic year) to shut down the accounts for all users who have left the school (or no longer require access).
• Audit of users in schools by asking Angel Solutions for a list of all authorised users in schools and when they last logged in (recognising that the LA will not be aware of the identity of members of staff in every school)

It can be useful to use this as a wider reminder for schools to manage online system access more widely, but Perspective Lite should be specifically covered.

In the event that the LA has any concerns around inappropriate access within a school the LA should take steps to restrict access for that school until the matter can be investigated (unless they are reassured by the school Head that the matter is in hand).

In that case, the permissions for the school can be modified through the following process:

• Admin menu > Perspective Services

• Scroll down to the school list and search for or select the school you need to shut down

• Click the pencil icon on the right hand side of the school and change the drop down options to 'No Access'

• Then click the return arrow on the right hand side. 

No users in the school can now access data in Perspective Lite (though they can access the system). After the situation is resolved, you can reverse this process and return the school data settings to whatever they should be for that school's circumstances in your SLA or traded service.