The classroom
What you approve
The two things that wait for a class teacher's decision — a parent's pickup request and a sick note — what each one means for the child and the family, and where your authority ends.
Two kinds of thing arrive on your dashboard needing you rather than the office. They look similar and they are not: one is a decision that changes what happens at the gate, and the other is a receipt.
Pickup requests: a real decision
A parent asks the school for one of three things, and because the child is in your class, you are the person who can answer.
Early pickup — the child is to be collected before the end of the day.
Late drop-off — the child will arrive later than usual.
Planned absence — the child will not be at school on a named day at all.
The first two carry a time of day; a planned absence carries a date. That difference runs all the way through: a pickup is about a moment, an absence is about a day.
What you are shown
Each waiting request shows the child’s photograph, their name, what is being asked and when, and the adult expected to do the collecting — a line reading Expected guardian: Thandi Mokoena, or Not provided where none was named.
The photograph is there on purpose. Approving a collection is a decision about a particular child, and a face is harder to confuse than a name on a list.
Requests appear newest first. If your school is running a long queue of them, the office’s own list is the complete one.
Approving
Approve does three things at once, and the confirmation names the most important:
Approved — Naledi Mokoena can be collected. The gate has been notified.
The request is recorded as approved with your name on it. The parent who asked is sent the answer on their own channels, in their own language, with a link to their list of requests — so nobody has to phone the school to find out what you decided. And the gate is told.
That last part is what makes the approval real. When the child comes to be collected and their badge is scanned, the officer sees a line on the screen reading Approved early pickup at 12:30, and beneath it Expected: Thandi Mokoena. The officer no longer has to take a stranger’s word for it, and you never have to be found in a corridor to confirm it.
Approving a planned absence does one more thing. That day stops counting against the child: it is left out of the “not here today” count on your dashboard, and it is removed from both sides of the attendance percentage, so a day the school agreed to can never make a child look chronically absent.
Declining
Declining requires a reason. There is a box labelled Reason if not approved, with the hint e.g. guardian not authorised, and the button beneath it reads Do not approve. Try to decline without writing anything and you are stopped:
Add a short reason before not approving this request.
The reason is compulsory because the parent is told the answer either way. A refusal with no reason is one the family cannot act on — they only learn that the child is not being released, not what to do about it. It is also the record of why, for whoever asks later.
Where your authority stops
You can see and decide requests for children in your own classes and no others. A request for a child in another class is not yours to approve and is not shown to you.
You can only decide a request that is still waiting. If the office has already answered it, your decision will not go through.
You cannot cancel a request once it exists. Withdrawing one is the office’s to do.
Sick notes: a receipt, not a verdict
When a parent sends a note about a child in your classes, a card appears under Sick notes awaiting you with the child’s name, their class, and when the note arrived. The card is amber, because it is waiting on you.
Pressing Acknowledge turns it quiet and marks it Acknowledged. The card stays on the screen rather than disappearing, so you can see what you have just done instead of wondering whether it registered.
Understand what that button is and is not. It records that a teacher has seen the note. It does not excuse the day — the note has already done that, provisionally, on its own. And it does not settle anything: the day sits at Auto-excused — confirm until the office confirms it.
So acknowledging is not you approving an absence. It is you closing the loop on having been told, which is the thing a parent most wants to know has happened.
Each card also offers Sick notes, which opens that child’s history for the last term — the same view described in the previous chapter, and the fastest way to see whether today’s note is one of many.
The division of labour, in one paragraph
You decide what a class teacher can decide: whether this child may be collected early today, and whether this child was in your room this morning. The office decides what only the school can decide: whether an absence is finally excused, and whether a request should be withdrawn. Nothing you do can be silently overturned by the system — but the office’s decision is the last word, and once they have settled a day, it stays settled.