Perspective Lite is your school's access point for LA data, and it's important that each headteacher has the correct contact information so the school are as engaged with the system as possible.
In Nexus, you can securely request that our support team update the headteacher's information if you believe it to be incorrect. More information on this can be found below.
In Perspective Lite, only the Headteacher can change and update their own details. Headteachers and administrators within the school's account can maintain their own users (for more information on how they do that, click here), or LA staff can request additional admins via Nexus.
If you become aware that the headteacher's information on a Perspective Lite account is incorrect, you can request an update via our Support Team. There are two approaches to this, depending on the status of the information in GIAS.
Updating Multiple Headteacher Accounts?
Please download the file attached at the bottom of this guide, complete it, and send it to our Support Team.
Bulk requests must be submitted using the provided spreadsheet, as this allows the updates to be securely imported into our bulk update tool, helping to reduce manual entry and minimise the risk of processing errors.
Please note that where large numbers of individual update requests are submitted separately, the Support Team may ask that these are instead consolidated and resubmitted using the bulk update sheet before the changes can be processed.
Requesting a Headteacher Update (GIAS Mismatch)
The Perspective Accounts page is a good place to get a general overview of the current setup across your schools. We will automatically flag any differences between Perspective Lite and GIAS, giving you a super quick indication of things that may be outdated.
For now, we'll quickly cover just the steps to request headteacher changes. For detailed information on the Perspective Accounts page, click here.
Locate the school in question (you can use the handy filters at the top), click GIAS MISMATCH, then select Report incorrect details.
With Send a Request to Nexus Support selected, enter the new headteacher information in the fields. The First Name, Last Name and Email fields are mandatory. Please ensure you use a secure school email address and not personal emails.
If you want our Support Team to send the new headteacher their password reset link once set up, tick the box.
Feel free to include any other details that may help our team and click Send Request.
Our Support Team will then sanity-check the request to ensure it's possible. In some scenarios, they may need to follow up with you directly. This could be for a variety of reasons, such as the new details being in use elsewhere, the old headteacher being linked to multiple schools, or anything else general they may need to query.
All being well, the team will process the request and you'll receive an automated email to confirm it was successful. In the meantime, the status will change from GIAS mismatch to Pending. Click on the Pending lozenge to see when the request was sent.
The GIAS Mismatch flag may appear even though the headteacher details are correct in Perspective Lite, but the data is wrong on GIAS. You can use the same instructions as above, but this time select Notify the School.
A pre-populated template will appear, allowing you to send an email to the school asking them to address the issue on GIAS.
Once the school correct this, the GIAS mismatch error will be cleared.
Requesting a Headteacher Update (No GIAS Mismatch)
In some scenarios, you may be aware of headteacher details that are incorrect in both Perspective Lite and GIAS, therefore there's no mismatch, but the data is still wrong. Best practise would be to first get the information updated in GIAS to then flag as a mismatch in Nexus. Therefore, you should notify the school of the outdated GIAS information.
However, if you just need to get a headteacher's information updated in Perspective without the added step of the school correcting GIAS, you can, navigate to the school's dashboard via the Schools menu, select the relevant school and click Edit.
Then select Amend Headteacher/Principal.
You can then follow the steps in the above Requesting a Headteacher Update section of this guide to submit the request to our Support Team.
If a school contacts your Local Authority directly about adding/deleting users or updating details of staff who are not the Headteacher, please refer them to their admins or this help guide.
Updating Headteacher Accounts in Bulk
There may be times where you need to update headteacher accounts in bulk. Our Support Team will help to facilitate this by sending comms out to LAs during August, ahead of schools returning in September for the start of the academic year.
The Support Team team have a secure import tool that updates the headteacher information, based on the DfE number.
The importer accepts CSV files in the following format. It's also fine to send an Excel sheet and Support will convert it to CSV prior to import. The template is available for download at the bottom of this guide.
| DfE (7 digit) | Forename | Surname | Email Address | Role (HT) |
| 111999 | John | Smith | johnsmith@school.sch.uk | HT |
The Support Team will then run the import, which will make changes where possible and flag any accounts that weren't able to be changed. We will then let you know the outcome of the import.
Reasons Why the Import May Fail for a School
| Reason for failure | Action |
| The head's account is linked to multiple schools. | The Support Team would seek confirmation from the LA of whether the accounts should be split, or whether the new head should be in charge of both. |
| No Perspective Lite account exists for that school | The Support Team will seek confirmation from the LA of whether you are happy they set up a new account |
| The school have Angel Solution's full Perspective package. |
Angel Solutions will pick the change up with the school directly and their account manager will get in touch with them about this.
|
| A school with a matching DfE number cannot be found in the LA | The Support Team will let the LA know to investigate the incorrect DfE number or missing school. |
Note:
Support will always get back in touch with you to confirm what was/wasn't changed, so the relevant action can be taken.