EYFS: Choosing your Settings for Observations

Settings for observations can be found by clicking on 'Ladders at Home' in the 'Settings' tab.

Learning Ladders provides schools with options around sharing observations with parents. 

The first setting involves deciding whether you would like to 'Share Observations'. 

When set to 'disabled', no observations are shared with parents. Parents will only be able to access articles, home learning and pupil reports (if enabled) and will not have the 'Observations' option in Ladders at Home. The tick box at the bottom of the observation upload button 'share with parents' will be removed.

If 'Share Observations' is enabled, this means that observations will be shared with parents in Ladders at Home (to those Parents who have verified their account).

Further options for sharing appear below:

There are two choices for sharing observations, either automatic or manual sharing.

If Automatically Publish Observations is 'Disabled' then any observations uploaded by a practitioners will need to be published manually by clicking on 'Share new observations'. This option enables teams to release observations on a certain day of the week, or at a certain time period, for example half termly. The time and date stamp communicate when observations were last shared. 

Only observations where practitioners have ticked the box 'Share with Parent' will be shared with parents with either setting. Parents receive an email informing them that an observation has been shared.

If 'Automatically Publish Observations' is toggled to 'enabled' then parents will be able to view the observations 2 hours after the observation is saved to the system.

Sharing observations with parents provides immediate feedback about what their child is learning in school. Learning Ladders has reviewed the research that shows better conversations about learning at home are achieved when communication with parents is ongoing throughout the year.

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