Once schools fully open in the coming weeks there will be the added complexity of managing the lateral flow testing programme in schools.
As testing is voluntary, active consent is required for the testing of both staff and students. In order to test pupils, consent from parents/guardians must be gained before tests can take place.
If your school uses SIMS, you will be able to record received consent by adding a consent type to the Student Details page. This will allow it to be recorded centrally and also allow for effective reporting. Our guide below shows how this can be done quickly in SIMS.
1) Log into SIMS (You will need an account with School Administrator permissions or higher to complete the setup of this task).
2) Navigate to Tools > Lookups > Maintain . Search for and select 'Parental Consent'.
3) In the Values box, click 'New' and enter 'COV' in the Code field and 'COVID Testing Consent' in the Description field as per the image below.
4) Once this is done, ensure that it's set to 'Active', click 'OK, and then click 'Save' in the top-left corner beneath the Lookup Type Details heading. You and all other users will need to log out of SIMS before the addition is visible on the Student Details screen.
5) Once you've logged out of SIMS and then in again, the 'Covid Testing Consent' option will appear in he Parental Consent section of the student details page (see image below).
6) You can then edit the Covid testing consent via the bulk student update routine via Routines > Student > Bulk update, or individually by selecting an appropriate student profile.
7) A report which shows who has been granted consent by their parents for the test can be downloaded and imported into SIMS using the files below.