Incident reporting

Before you begin

Have these decisions and records ready before you switch the feature on:

• an admin who will choose the categories, sharing permissions and follow-up rules;
• classes with students enrolled and teachers assigned;
• accurate adult learner or guardian portal access if updates may be shared with families; and
• a separate, understood safeguarding process for anything concerning a child's safety or welfare.

This is not a safeguarding system

Incident reporting is for day-to-day records. It is deliberately not a safeguarding or child-protection system, and it does not offer a safeguarding category. If a member of staff is worried about a child's safety or welfare, that belongs in your madrassa's own safeguarding process, with your designated lead, and not in this feature.

We draw the line explicitly because a statutory safeguarding chronology carries obligations Makatib.App does not discharge: restricted access, a named responsible person, and retention that runs well past a child's time at your madrassa.

Turn incident reporting on

Incident reporting is off until an admin switches it on. Until then it appears nowhere, for anybody.

1. Open Admin → Settings → Incidents.
2. Tick Use incident reporting.
3. Under Categories, choose the ones your madrassa uses: behaviour, injury or first aid, medical, learning, attendance or punctuality, property or uniform, and positive recognition.
4. Under Shared with families automatically, tick any category that should reach a family as soon as it is recorded. Positive recognition is the obvious candidate.
5. Under Teachers may share these themselves, tick the categories a teacher may send without management. Anything left unticked can only be sent by an admin.
6. Set Chase an unacknowledged message after to the number of days before the incidents report lists a family who has not replied.
7. Choose Save settings.

Medical is health information, so it is switched off unless you choose it deliberately. Turning it on changes what you are asking staff to record about children, and you should be satisfied you have a lawful basis for it first.

Once it is on, teachers see Incidents in the teaching sidebar and admins see it in the admin navigation. Switching a category off also removes it from the two sharing lists, so review those after any change.

Run a safe first test

Before staff use incident reporting for a real event, ask an admin and a teacher to walk through one harmless positive-recognition example together. Use a real student only when the wording is appropriate for their permanent record.

1. Confirm the teacher can see Teaching → Incidents.
2. Record a positive-recognition incident with a short staff note.
3. If the category is not automatic, share a simple family message such as “A positive contribution was recognised in class today.”
4. Ask an admin to confirm the entry appears under Admin → Incidents → All incidents.
5. If a family update was sent, confirm it appears in the correct portal account and that an acknowledgement returns to the incident.

This checks permissions and the family route without waiting for a difficult situation to discover that a class, teacher assignment or portal link is missing.

Record an incident

1. Open Teaching → Incidents and choose Log incident.
2. Choose the student. The list is grouped by the classes you teach.
3. Choose the category, and unless it is positive recognition choose how serious it is: Low, Medium or High.
4. Set the date, and the time if it helps. The date cannot be in the future.
5. Give a short heading under What happened, the detail under Staff notes, and anything you did under Action taken.
6. Tick Keep this to management and me if the record should go no further.
7. Otherwise write the Message for the family in wording a parent or adult learner can read.
8. Choose Record incident.

Staff notes are for colleagues and are never shown to a family. That matters more than it might sound: a behaviour note routinely names another child, and another family's child is not something you may disclose. Write freely in the staff notes, and write separately for the family.

A restricted incident stays with management and the member of staff who recorded it. Other teachers do not see it and it can never be shared with a family, so no family message is asked for.

An incident is recorded internally first. It only goes out at once when the category is set to share automatically, you wrote a family message, the incident is not restricted, and you are allowed to share that category. Everything else waits for someone to send it.

Share an update with a family

1. Open the incident from Teaching → Incidents, or from Admin → Incidents → All incidents.
2. Under The family, write or check the message. Do not name other pupils in it.
3. Leave Ask the family to acknowledge it ticked if you want a confirmation back, or untick it for a note that needs no reply.
4. Choose Share with the family.

Categories an admin has reserved to management show who will send it instead, so a teacher writes the wording and management review it before it goes.

Only people who currently have full access to that student's record receive the update, including an adult learner's own account. A contact restricted to finance only, or one whose access an adult learner has ended, receives nothing.

The update appears in the family's portal messages. They open it, choose I have read this and can add a short note, and the acknowledgement is recorded with its date. Replies come back through ordinary messages to the teacher.

Reading and acknowledging are tracked separately, because “we told them” and “they told us they had seen it” are different claims.

Set a follow-up rule

A rule watches for a pattern: three behaviour incidents in a term, say, or two serious injuries in thirty days. When the pattern is met, the student appears on a review list for management.

1. Open Admin → Settings → Incidents and, under Follow-up rules, choose Add a rule.
2. Name the rule so the reason is obvious on the review list.
3. Choose the category, and under Only count set a minimum severity if minor entries should not count towards it.
4. Set After how many incidents the rule should raise a follow-up.
5. Choose whether they are counted over the academic term or a rolling number of days, and give the number of days if you chose a rolling window.
6. Leave Raise again at every further multiple ticked to hear about a continuing pattern. With a threshold of three, that raises one at three, six and nine.
7. Choose Create rule.

A rule never messages a family on its own. It puts the matter in front of a person, with the incidents attached, and a human decides what to do, which is the right way round for a conversation of this kind.

Rules only count incidents recorded after the rule was created, so switching one on does not flood your review list with history. Use Switch off to pause a rule and keep it, or Delete to remove it.

Work through the follow-up queue

1. Open Admin → Incidents. The Follow-ups tab opens on Needs review.
2. Read the entry. It names the student, the rule, how many incidents were counted and the window they fell in.
3. Record what you did under What did you do?, such as a call home or a meeting arranged.
4. Choose Mark as actioned, or Dismiss when no action is needed.

Closed entries stay available under the Actioned and Dismissed filters with the note you left, so the decision is on the record as well as the pattern.

Correct, resolve or void a record

• To change what a family sees, reopen the incident and use Update what the family sees. Their copy is updated and shows the date it changed. Once an incident has been shared, only management can amend it, because the text has left the building and the change is a correction of record.
• To close an incident that has run its course, choose Mark as resolved. The record stays visible and simply reads as resolved.
• To withdraw an incident that should not have been recorded, an admin chooses Void and gives a reason.

A voided record and its reason are kept rather than deleted: “we reviewed this and it was logged in error” is a different fact from “this never happened”, and your audit trail should be able to show which. Every amendment is kept in the audit trail too.

See the whole picture

Incidents appear on a student's record for teachers who teach them and for management, and shared updates appear in the family's portal. Filter Teaching → Incidents by class, or open Admin → Incidents → All incidents for the whole madrassa.

The incidents report at Admin → Reports → Incidents covers the period you choose: how much is being recorded and when, the split by category and severity, the classes recording the most, and the families who have not acknowledged what was sent. Filter by class, year group, student, the member of staff who recorded it, category, severity, state or share state, then choose Export CSV for the filtered rows.

The export carries no free text. Categories, dates, severity and acknowledgement counts leave; narrative about a child does not.

Troubleshooting

A teacher cannot see Incidents

Confirm an admin has enabled incident reporting, then check the teacher is active and assigned to at least one current class. The student picker only includes students in classes that teacher teaches.

A category is missing

Open Admin → Settings → Incidents and enable it under Categories. If you switch a category back on, also review whether it should be shared automatically or be shareable by teachers; those choices are cleared when the category is switched off.

The teacher cannot share the incident

The incident may be restricted, or management may have reserved that category. An admin can review and share an unrestricted incident from Admin → Incidents.

The family did not receive an update

Check that the incident shows as shared and has a family message. Then confirm the adult learner or guardian currently has full access to the student record. Finance-only and no-access contacts do not receive incident updates.

A rule did not raise a follow-up

Confirm the rule is on, its category and minimum severity match, and the threshold falls inside its term or rolling-day window. Incidents from before the rule was created do not count.

Before you finish

• Staff can find the feature and know which category to use.
• Staff know what belongs in staff notes and what may be sent to a family.
• Safeguarding concerns have a separate route understood by everyone.
• Management know who will review reserved incidents and follow-up entries.
• A family-message test reached only the intended portal recipients.