When you cannot sign in

Almost every sign-in problem is the email address, not the password. You have to use the address your school holds for you — not a second address you also own, and not your husband’s or wife’s address, even if the invitation reached that inbox.

“Wrong email or password”

Work through these in order.

1. Check the address. Is it the one you gave the school? A parent with two addresses will usually have given one to the school and be typing the other.

2. Check for a typo in the domain. gmial.com and yaho.com are the two that catch people.

3. Check the password. Passwords are case-sensitive; your phone’s keyboard may have capitalised the first letter for you.

4. Ask the school which address they have for you. They can look it up, and this one step ends most of these — usually you are typing a different address from the one they hold.

   If the address they hold is simply wrong, what to do depends on whether you have ever set up an account:

   • You have never set up an account. Ask them to correct the address (Edit contact on your child’s page) and then send you a new link with Generate invitations. A Resend will not help: it goes to the same address as the original invitation, not the corrected one.
   • You set up an account before. You sign in with the address that account was set up with, and the school cannot change it. Ask the school which address that was: their list of invitations shows it next to the one you used. Do not ask for a new link; an account that is already connected cannot use it.

⚠️ Stop after about four attempts. Your account locks after five wrong passwords. That is no longer a dead end — see below — but it is still an hour of your evening you did not need to spend.

“Could not reach Prefect”

This is your connection, not your account. Nothing is wrong with your details.

Move somewhere with better signal and try again. If the app works on Wi-Fi but not on mobile data, or the other way round, that is the network — try the other one.

You have an invitation link but cannot get past it

The link from your school creates your account and connects your child in one go. You do not need an account first, and the school does not need to make one for you.

Opening it shows the school’s name and your child’s name. Tap Set up my account, then:

1. Confirm it is you. The page shows the last few digits of the phone number the school holds for you (or, if they hold no number, your relationship to the child). If that is not you, tap No and tell the school; nothing is set up.
2. Choose a password of at least 8 characters, and tap Finish setting up. There is no email box: your account uses the address the school sent the invitation to.
3. Note the address on the last screen. It says “Next time, sign in with” followed by that address. That, with your new password, is how you sign in from then on, on the website or in the app.

If you already have an EduPrefect sign-in on that address because you use EduPrefect for a child at another school, the page says so when you choose a password and offers Sign in instead. Sign in with the account you already have; you come back to the same page, and Add this child to my account finishes it. If you are already signed in when you open the link, you see that button straight away.

If your children are at two schools, see using one account across two schools.

⚠️ If you have a staff sign-in at any school (on the website or in the Teacher app), contact EduPrefect before you claim a link from a second school. Today staff pages and the Teacher app stop working for an account that belongs to more than one school, and claiming a parent link makes your account belong to that school too.

⚠️ If you are on the staff at the same school as your child, this does not work yet. Your account is already connected to that school as staff, and it cannot be connected to the same school a second time as a parent. The page will say your account “is already linked to a different person at this school”. Ask the school office to raise it with EduPrefect.

If you have no link at all, ask the school to send you one. They can do it from your child’s page.

Two things worth knowing about the link itself:

• It is single-use and it expires. If yours has been sitting in your inbox for weeks, ask for a fresh one rather than tapping the old one.
• It must be claimed by an account on the same email address the school invited. Signing in as someone else — your husband’s or wife’s account, or a second address of your own — will not claim it.

If the page says it is busy and asks you to try again shortly, that is our server, not your link. Wait a minute and reopen it. Do not ask for a replacement; the one you have is fine.

You are signed in, but no children are showing

If the app says No children linked yet, your account is fine — it just is not connected to any pupil yet.

Contact your school’s registrar and ask them to link your guardian record to your child. This is a school-side record, so nobody at EduPrefect can do it for you, and it takes a registrar about a minute.

If some of your children are showing but not all, that is the same problem for the missing ones. If the missing child is at a different school, see using one account across two schools.

You are locked out

After five wrong passwords the account locks itself. This is deliberate — it is what stops somebody guessing their way into your child’s records.

In the app you will see “Sign in failed (403). Try again.” On the website the message names the fix. Either way that is the lock, it is not a typo on your part, and trying again is exactly what will not work.

Getting back in

⚠️ Do this in a web browser, not in the app. The parent app has no unlock screen yet. Go to the sign-in page in your phone’s browser — the same address your school gave you — and you will find two links under the sign-in button.

If you remember your password, use “Locked out after too many attempts?”. We email you a link; opening it lifts the lock and leaves your password alone. The unlock email is only sent while the account is actually locked. If yours was not locked, nothing will come: use “Forgot your password?” instead.

If you have forgotten your password — which is usually why the account locked in the first place — use “Forgot your password?” instead. Choosing a new password also lifts the lock, so it fixes both problems in one go. You do not need to do the unlock first.

Either way, the email goes only to the address your school holds for you. That is the whole point of it, and it is why the page starts its answer with “if” rather than confirming anything: we will not tell a stranger who typed your address whether you have an account.

The link can take a few minutes and sometimes lands in spam. Do not keep asking for more. A second request inside the first few minutes re-sends the same link rather than a new one, so it does not help.

If the email never comes

The most likely reason is the plain one: the address the school holds for you is not the address you are checking. Ask them which address they have. If it is wrong, say so — the school cannot change the address an existing account signs in with, so they will need to raise it with EduPrefect.

The lock also lifts on its own after a day if you would rather just wait.

(Your school’s own staff accounts have an extra route — an administrator there can clear a lockout from the staff page. That page works from the school’s staff records, so it cannot help you if the school knows you only as a parent. If you are also on the staff there, it is the same single account either way — ask the office.)

If something is urgent, such as a fee deadline, ask your school to act on it directly: they can see the invoice and take the payment without you signing in.

Ask the school first, not us

For anything on this page, your school is the faster route. They can see your guardian record, the address they hold for you, and whether your children are linked. EduPrefect support cannot see any of that without going through the school anyway.