Guide
Updated 24 September 2026.
Send the letter to each adult the school has recorded as allowed to receive news about that child. Leave off anyone recorded as blocked. Two parents can both be on the list and still have separate inboxes. If nobody has recorded a decision, hold the letter and pass that pupil to the office.
A lot of schools still have “mum’s email” as the only contact. That falls over when parents live apart, a grandparent does the pickups, or there is an order limiting what one adult can see. Permission sits on the adult, for that child.
School policy, the current Department for Education guidance, and any order you hold are what decide parental responsibility. On the day of a send, the office only has three states: allowed, blocked, or missing. Missing means you hold it.
A restricted contact should not get the letter in the app, by email, or in a print pack. Marking the message as an emergency lets it go out in the evening. It does not add that adult back onto the list.
Taking a block off is for the safeguarding lead. It is a poor fix for a send list that looks short. Keep an audit note, because someone will ask in a term’s time why it changed.
Each included adult gets their own copy. They cannot see the other household’s reply, parents’ evening time, or what the other adult has paid.
They get it when the school has recorded that both may. Having parental responsibility and being allowed to receive letters are two different records. The send follows the record.
In whatever the school already uses for casework. Pupil Gate can limit who sees the office copy and note the handoff. Case files stay where they are.
More on this: Parental responsibility in Pupil Gate, Checklist before you send, Closure messages. The full list is on the guides page.
Open the demo as a parent, then as the office, and see the same letter from both ends. It is a fictional trust with the real product behind it.
