Part 7. Reference

7.1 Glossary

Version 1.0 ·Updated 2026-10-07

Next reviewed by 2027-04-07.

Written for a school's staff learning how Kestrel works, the trainers who teach them, and the families using the portal.

The words Kestrel uses in its screens and in this guide, each with a plain meaning, grouped by topic.

Written forRegistrarFront officeTeacherHead of house or yearWellbeingCounsellorLearning supportChild safety officerCase managerDeputy case managerNursePrincipal and executiveBusiness managerITFamiliesStudents

Using the glossary

Kestrel keeps one word for each thing, so a word means the same on every screen. A few common words have two meanings, and the last section says which is which. The terms are grouped by topic, and a see line at the end of each section points to the chapter that uses them.

The school and its records

Kestrel: The student information system your school uses.
School: Your school's own copy of Kestrel. Its records are kept apart from every other school's, and no other school can read them.
Person: One human, recorded once at your school, whatever they are to it. A parent who is also a member of staff has one page, not two.
What a person is to the school: The kinds of connection a person has with the school on a given day: enquirer, applicant, student, staff, volunteer, contractor, practice student or board member. A person can hold several at once.
Span: The dates a fact runs for, such as the years a person is a student. Correcting a fact closes the old span and opens a new one, so the history is kept.
Household: The residents who live together at an address. A student's parents and carers are found through the household.
Contact point: An email address, a mobile number or a phone number recorded for a person, with a preference for which to use first.
Relationship: Who one person is to another, such as parent or guardian, recorded with the dates it runs for.
Standing on a student: What an adult may do for one student: be called in an emergency, collect them, receive their reports, receive communications and hold parental responsibility. A relationship alone does not give standing.
Standing at a school: Whether a person is an administrator or a member of staff at the school. It decides who may change the school's own settings, and it gives no view of a student's record.
Field: A piece of information a school chooses to record, such as a house colour or a dietary note. A school can define its own, and each is classified before it has a value.
Tag: A yes-or-no field a school defines for itself.
Boarder: A student who sleeps at the school. Kestrel works this out from a current place in a boarding household, so it is never typed in separately.
Alumnus: A former student. Kestrel works this out from the end of the student's enrolment.

Enrolment and the school year

Application: A family's request for a place, followed from enquiry to offer and decision.
Stage: Where an application is. Kestrel works it out from the events recorded so far, so it cannot disagree with them.
Placement: A student's place in an intake: their year level, their campus and their load.
Intake: The group of students a school admits for one start date.
Lesson: A class in a period on a day, as the timetable has it.
Session: One occasion a roll is marked for: a lesson, a whole day, an activity or a detention.
Roll: The attendance record for one session of one class, and the screen a teacher marks it on. It is not a list of all students.
Class: A group of students taught together. A class is academic, pastoral or a session group for something outside the timetable.
House: A pastoral or sporting house of students. A boarding house is a different thing and is kept as a household.
Task (assessment): A piece of assessed work that a teacher sets and marks. It is not a task on your task list.
Task (your list): One thing for one person to do by a day, raised by a workflow or given by a colleague.
Exam provision: An arrangement for a student in an exam that learning support has approved, such as extra time, rest breaks, a separate room or a reader.

Wellbeing and health

Case: A wellbeing case kept by the wellbeing team, or a health case kept by the health centre.
Alert: A line about a student that staff must see wherever the student appears, such as a medical alert or an order limiting who may collect the child.
Action plan: A plan for what to do when a student's health condition needs a response, kept by the health centre.
Individual plan: A plan for a student's support, kept by the wellbeing team.
Concern: A child-protection concern recorded under the school's child safety policy, which only the roles named in that policy may read.
Protected record: A person whose record a court order or a safety concern has closed to all but named readers. A mark beside the name says so.
Sitting (detention): One occasion a detention takes place, with the students expected at it.

The console and the portal

The console: The signed-in application your staff work in, as different from the school's public pages and the family portal.
The band: The strip across the top of each console page: the school's crest and name, the areas, search and your account.
Area: A part of the record with its own screens, such as Attendance or Medical, shown as a pill on the band or under More.
Settings area: One page under Settings, owned by the part of Kestrel that the setting belongs to.
The record page: One person's page, made of the sections each part of Kestrel adds for the roles that may read them.
Record mark: A word beside a person's name at the top of their page, such as Boarder.
The portal: The place families and students sign in to, which shows only what the school has chosen to share.
Empty state: What a screen says when the school's record has nothing there yet.
Selection: The rows you have ticked in a list to act on together.

Access and privacy

Role: A named set of capabilities a school gives to a person. Twelve ship with Kestrel and a school can change them or make its own.
Capability: A named permission to do one thing, such as read a person's record. Roles are made of capabilities.
Account: Your sign-in. One account works at each school you have a place at.
Passkey: A sign-in kept on one of your devices and opened with your fingerprint, face or PIN.
Step-up: A second check with your passkey at the moment of a serious act, so a signed-in browser left open cannot be used for it.
Audit trail: The permanent record of what was read and changed at the school, and by whom. Entries are added and never altered.
Classification: How closely a field is classified: internal, sensitive or restricted. It decides which roles may read the field.
Consent: A family's recorded answer to a request, such as a photograph in the newsletter or leaving the grounds on an excursion.
Retention class: How long a kind of record is kept, and what the period counts from. When it ends, the record is deleted unless a legal hold covers it.
Legal hold: A note that stops a record being deleted while it is needed.
Void with a reason: How a recorded moment is undone: a new entry names the original and says why, and nothing is deleted.

Messages, forms and returns

Message: Something the school sends to a person. Each recipient is checked against their standing and consents before it goes.
Template: A message template is wording the office reuses, and a report template is the layout of a student report. A form is never called a template.
Form: A set of questions a person answers, and the route the answers take.
Workflow: The steps a form's answers go through, each for a person to approve, do or be told.
Run: One use of a workflow, or one pass of an import, an export or a billing period.
Questionnaire: A form whose answers are stored on a person's record as field values.
Survey: A form about no-one in particular, whose answers are counted.
Return: A file of figures the school reports to a government body, made from the record.
Feed: A web address your own calendar application reads, so Kestrel's calendar shows beside your other events.

Words with two meanings

Word	What it can mean
Role	A set of capabilities (the Roles page), or what a person is to the school (student, staff, volunteer).
Standing	Whether someone is an administrator at the school, or what an adult may do for one student.
Session	A signed-in visit, or an occasion a roll is marked for.
Sitting	An admission assessment, a detention, or one student's seat in an exam.
Mark	An attendance mark, a word beside a name, or a status colour.
Case	A health case or a wellbeing case.
Task	A piece of assessed work, or something for one person to do by a day.
Run	A workflow run, an import, an export or a billing period.
Note	A health note, a counselling note or a legal-hold note.
Plan	An action plan (health), an individual plan (wellbeing) or an instalment plan (billing).
Selection	A team or cast, a subject choice, or the rows you have ticked.
Alert	A line about a student, or a warning about a system fault.