Guide for parents and guardians
How parents and guardians join, link to a child, and use family safety controls.
Guide for parents and guardians
A parent or guardian account lets you link to your child, stay informed about important activity, and decide which businesses and schools your child may message.
Joining as a parent
In the EduPress app for Android, choose Parent/Guardian when you sign up. Parent accounts are created in the app; the website cannot create one.
- What you give. Your own details, and your child's name, username, school and your relationship to them.
- What EduPress creates. Your account, an account for your child that you manage, and a request for your child to join their school. The school reviews that request. A child signed up this way is never approved by the school automatically.
- Your link. A link to a child you add at sign-up starts straight away. Your child accepts it, and their school verifies it, before you can see your child's summary or use Tyra for them. If you created your child's account, the acceptance is done for you. When a school approves your request to link, that approval verifies the link. If your child moves to another school, the new school has to verify your link again, and you're told which school to ask.
If your child already has an account
Ask their school for help. A link to your child works the same way as one made at sign-up: your child accepts it, and their school verifies it.
What you can see
Once your child has accepted the link and the school has verified it, you can see a short summary:
- Connections. How many people your child is connected with.
- Message reports. How many reports about your child's messages have been reviewed.
When your child turns 18, the summary stops and you can't use Tyra for them: they look after their own account.
You do not see your child's messages with other people. When a school replies to your child, you see the school's reply in full.
Your weekly summary
Once your child has accepted your link and their school has verified it, you get a summary of your child's week every Sunday evening (18:00, Uganda time), in the app, as a push notification and by email. It covers Sunday to Sunday and lists:
- posts your child published on their school's Bulletin after a teacher said yes, by title only, and how many of their posts a teacher sent back for changes
- up to five news posts from your child's school, results the school published, and the school's events in the next two weeks
- live classes your child joined and library items they rented, by name only
- how many new connections they made, never who
It only lists what both you and your child can see. It never shows your child's messages or who they talk to, their searches, who viewed their profile, or anything they reported or blocked. A quiet week says so. If a post in a summary is later hidden from you, its title stays but it no longer opens. Your child reads the same summary on their Family screen.
Read past summaries, and turn them off, on Family safety in the app or Delegated access on the web. Summaries are kept for a year. You see a child's summaries only while you can act for them: if your child stops accepting your link, their school's verification ends or the link is removed, their summaries leave your list and your notifications, past ones included. Emails we already sent stay in your email inbox. When your child turns 18, they stop and leave your list too.
Counts and feeds
If your child is under 18, they don't see how many likes, reactions or comments other people's posts have, or how many followers or members other people, schools and communities have. They see the counts on their own posts and comments, and how many people follow them. Nobody else sees the counts on your child's posts and comments or how many people follow them, you included. Children in P1 to P7 can react only with Like, Celebrate, Support or Love. Feeds end with "You're all caught up" instead of loading more as your child scrolls, and the same is true for everyone on EduPress.
Who can see your child's profile
Your child's profile is seen by their school: its staff, its pupils under 18, and the parents whose link it has verified. In S1 to S6 your child can choose to add their connections. Pupils under 18 connect, and message, only with pupils at their own school. Older messages between pupils at different schools stay readable, but no new ones can be sent. You can see the profile too. That holds once your child has acknowledged your link, and for as long as they're under 18.
Alerts you receive
Once your child has acknowledged the link, you get an alert when your child:
- blocks someone
- reports a person or a message
- applies for a listing, and when that application ends in an offer or a rejection
- messages a business, or a business replies
- messages a school
- asks about a listing
- is in a message that school staff reviewed
- deletes their account
You get at most one of these alerts a week for each kind of event. School replies to your child, and your child's requests to message a school, always reach you.
Anyone who can open your child's profile sees the awards and positions in its Record section, you included. Once your child's school has verified your link too, and while your child is under 18, you can also see their exam results there, and you're told each time their school adds an award, a position or a result.
Notifications on your child's phone
If your child is under 18, EduPress sends them no push notifications from 21:00 to 07:00, or from 08:00 to 16:00 on weekdays (Uganda time). The one exception is the reminder 15 minutes before a live class they joined. It still comes in lesson time, but never at night. A child in S1 to S6 gets one push when quiet hours end, saying how many new notifications they have. A child in P1 to P7 gets no single pushes, only one push a day at 16:30. Their notifications still wait for them in the app.
Your child can't turn on "who viewed your profile", and their visits to other people's profiles are never recorded.
Your child's posts
If your child is under 18, every post they write, and every change to one, waits for a member of staff at their school before anyone else sees it. Staff can approve it or send it back with a note. You see your child's posts once they're approved.
Your decisions
- Messages with businesses. No business can start a conversation. Your child can message a business only if you allow that particular business. You get an alert when your child writes and when the business replies (at most one of each a week), and you can withdraw permission at any time.
- Messages with schools. Your child, if under 18, can write to a school only while you allow that school. Your child can ask you from the app: the request alone allows nothing, you are alerted once, and your Allow or Decline settles it. You can withdraw permission at any time, even after the school is suspended.
- Job applications. When your child applies for a job, the employer gets your child's contact details only at the interview stage, and only if you agree, for that one application.
- Tyra. Once your child has accepted your link and their school has verified it, you can start a session to use Tyra for your child, from Delegated access. A session lasts 24 hours, or until you end it, in one of three modes: full (chat, quizzes and their saved work), read-only (read their Tyra without changing anything) or quizzes only. Your child is told when you start one, and their Family screen shows your sessions, with how many times you read their chats. Nobody but your child can clear their Tyra history.
In the app, the Family safety screen brings together messaging permissions for businesses and schools, job contact releases, delegated access, your weekly summaries and a summary for each child. It appears once you have linked children.
What parent accounts cannot do
Parent accounts in the app have no button for writing personal posts.