Primary school enrolment, fully digital
Hafnarfjörður is focusing on the digital development of its services, and the goal for primary school enrolment this year was to fully digitise the process.
At the beginning of the year and until 1 February, parents submitted applications for a place in the primary schools of the City of Hafnarfjörður. As in previous years, it was only possible to apply on Our pages of the town. However, the process that follows the receipt of an application has not been digitised; instead, communication with parents has taken place via emails, telephone calls and letters.
The primary school enrolment process on My Pages now consists of two main steps, and the school receives all the necessary information about the child electronically before they start school.
- In the previous step Parents/guardians are asked to apply for a school place and choose one of the town's nine primary schools. This application only requests basic information. School staff receive an overview of applications through the town's case management system, review the applications and approve or reject them.
- In the second step The registration process on My Pages requests detailed information such as allergies, intolerances, medical conditions, etc. At this stage, parents are also asked to grant permission or decline permission for their child's images to be published on the school's media. These communications were previously handled via email, telephone calls or letters, but now take place entirely through My Pages.
The application for school enrolment and the enrolment form are available in two languages, i.e. Icelandic and English.
By receiving the data in this way, it is saved directly into the council's case management system and all administration is much simpler, less manual work, increased security when recording information, and great convenience for parents to be able to complete enrolment and communicate with the school authorities via secure messaging on My Pages.
This new process is an important step in simplifying the service for the town's residents, and we hope that parents will welcome this new initiative. For the school staff, the benefits are considerable.
„A new application and enrolment system for Hafnarfjörður's primary schools increases the security of information sharing between schools and homes, reduces the likelihood of errors in registrations and better ensures data security in school operations,” says Vigfús Hallgrímsson, development officer for primary schools.