If your school has students that are 13 years old or younger, consider the following:

Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA)

 If your school is located in the United States, you should consider how the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) applies to you. For more information about COPPA, see http://www.coppa.org/.

Personal Microsoft Account

 As part of the upgrade, students' Microsoft accounts become personal rather than school-adminstered accounts. You may want to inform parents and guardians and get written consent as well as notify them about how to close the personal Microsoft account.
  • It isn’t possible for a school administrator to close these personal Microsoft accounts. Each account must be closed by the student who owns the account. For information about how to close a Microsoft account, see How do I close my account?.                

Suggested message to parents and guardians

Here is a template you can use to send to parents and guardians.

Subject: Action required for your child’s online accounts: <Child's name>, <Child’s personal Microsoft account email address>

Body: <Educational institution> is in process of upgrading to Microsoft Office 365 for education. After the upgrade, your child will have two accounts:

  • An Office 365 account. This is the account your child will use for all school-related work. This account is administered by <Educational institution>.
  • A personal Microsoft  account. This account used to be associated with the school, and your child may have created files by using SkyDrive, or used other Microsoft services such as Windows Live Messenger. After the upgrade this account is not associated with or required by the school, but your child can contine to use it.   

 There are several actions you can take after the upgrade to help you supervise your child's online activities:

    • For the school-related Office 365 account, change the password. You and your child should sign on to https://portal.microsoftonline.com/ and change the password to a value that you both know.
    • For the personal Microsoft account, if you want to, close the account. If you do not want your child to have this personal account, you can close it. Before closing it, check with your child to see if there are any files on SkyDrive that they want to transfer. For information on how to close the account, see How do I close my account?.        

Thank you for your help in making this upgrade go smoothly. If you have any questions, please contact <contact information>.