Parent/Guardian

When your child’s school or college has created a Xello Family account for you, you’ll receive an email. The email will include a link to activate your account within 17 days of receiving it. All you’ll need to do to get started is set a password.

Note: If you haven't received the activation email, it may have redirected to your spam folder. Make sure to remove "xello.co.uk" from your email spam settings to receive this and future messages from Xello.

Your child will need the support of caring adults to achieve their dreams. One of the ways you can support their future is through Xello Family.

The dashboard is the first page you’ll see when you log in. From here, you can manage your personal account, check out your child’s work, and access the demo account.

Xello Family dashboard

1. Manage your personal account
   Customise your personal account. Access your profile menu in the top right corner of any page. Upload a profile image, or add your mobile number.
2. View your child’s work
   Check out the work your child has completed. Click on their name to begin. If you have more than one child using Xello, they'll each have their own profile that you can review.
3. Try Xello yourself
   Select a year and start exploring. Use this opportunity to experience first-hand what your child is working on in school. Try a Lesson, complete an assessment, or explore careers!

Check out this short video for an overview of key features and how to get around your Xello Family account.

Xello Family is available in 135 languages. To change the language, click your profile menu in the top right corner of any page and choose the language.

Watch this video to see Xello from a student's perspective. Get an overview of the key features. Learn how Xello helps students build a personalised plan for a successful future.

Xello is a careers education and future readiness tool for secondary school students aged 11 to 18. It helps students of all backgrounds, abilities, and aspirations become future ready. Xello puts students at the heart of their journey of self-discovery. And every student builds the skills and knowledge for success in their own unique future.

Build self-knowledgeWith Xello, students discover more about themselves. It encourages them to record and reflect on their strengths, skills, and interests. They use what they've learned to build a plan that gets them excited and ready to explore!

ExploreStudents learn about career possibilities and educational pathways. They explore careers with engaging and relevant content. When exploring colleges and universities, they learn about campus environments and courses offered. Career, apprenticeship, college and university profiles help them envision their own future.

Create a planEvery student has a different idea of what their future will look like. Having the opportunity to set goals and build a plan helps students begin to put their ideas into action. Xello helps students build a plan starting now.

Learn & reassessAs students gain experience, knowledge, and skills, they reassess and change their plans. The skill to adapt as they learn is one that will support them well into their future.

Tip: Check out your child's Saved options. Learn how they're feeling about their career and post-secondary choices. Use your demo account to explore the careers in Xello yourself. Discuss opportunities they can take advantage of now, while they're still in school.

Your child was first introduced to Xello in school, but there's lots they can do outside of the classroom. Here are some ideas for how your child can use Xello at home:

• Complete an interactive Lesson. These are activities assigned to your child’s year. Lessons help students build vital skills for persistence, resilience, and real-world success.
• Complete an Assignment. Your child's careers leader or teacher may have created assignments for your child to work on.
• Build their About Me page. The About Me page helps your child to discover more about themselves. They define their interests, skills, and aspirations. Using this self-knowledge, they can explore the opportunities that are right for them.
• Explore. They learn about career possibilities and educational pathways. While reading through different career and school profiles, they save their favourites.

We take data protection and privacy very seriously. Xello complies with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Password and data security are important to Xello. This is why no passwords are visible in Xello for students or educators.

We use industry-standard best practices in data security. This includes using a technique called “hashing” to store all passwords. This means that once a password is encrypted, it cannot be decrypted.

Session timeouts
As long as a student is actively working in Xello, their session will stay open. If a student doesn’t interact with Xello for 30 minutes, their session will expire. They will need to re-enter their password to continue working.

Simply moving the mouse will not keep the session active, they have to interact with the application.

The "Keep me signed in" option
When you log in to Xello, there's an option to Keep me signed in. If you tick this box and then log in, your session won’t time out even after 30 minutes of inactivity. The next time you go to the login.xello.co.uk page, you’ll be logged in automatically.

Tip: Do not check Keep me signed in if you’re working on a public, shared computer.

Core components of accessibility
A myriad of techniques have been implemented to make Xello accessible. Here are some of the main pillars of our accessibility strategy:

• Colour contrast and font sizes meet the standards described in WCAG 2.2 Level AA
• Captioning for all audio and video content
• Full keyboard accessibility
• Use of ARIA-live regions for screen readers

Screen readers

All screen readers that support the above standards are compatible with Xello. To verify that we are meeting these standards, we test with the following screen readers:

• NVDA in FireFox on Windows
• VoiceOver in Safari on Mac and iOS
• JAWS in Internet Explorer on Windows
• ChromeVox

Note: Other screen readers will also work with Xello if they are compliant with the standards listed above.

More accessibility techniques in Xello

There are a lot of techniques used to make Xello an inclusive experience. Accessibility is built in at the design stage both for features and content.

• Links are provided to skip navigation that appears on every page
• Font sizes are made as large as possible
• No hover effects are used without equivalent click actions
• Drag and drop components have keyboard alternatives
• Images do not contain instructional or informational text
• Colour alone is never used to convey information
• Focus indicators are maintained throughout the site
• Forms include explicit labels and placeholder text is minimised
• Table columns and rows use proper markup
• Maintain simple navigation to reduce cognitive load
• Student-facing content is written to a year 7 reading level
• Links use descriptive text, e.g. not “click here”
• The Xello student experience and Xello Family are available in 135 different languages. Students or parents/guardians click their avatar in the top right corner on any page in Xello to select a different language.