Roles and permissions

Zion has five built-in roles: administrator, supervisor, monitor, student, and parent. Every account holds exactly one of them. “Teaching staff” is the label Zion uses on screen for administrators, supervisors, and monitors together, not a separate role. There is no owner role inside a school. The console that manages Zion’s own customer accounts belongs to the Zion team and sits outside any school’s roles. On top of the five built-in roles, administrators can create custom roles that give named people extra permissions. Custom roles only ever add to what someone can do. They never take anything away or replace the built-in role.

The five roles

Role	Typical user	Scope
Administrator	Principal, head of school, academic director	Every learning centre and every feature in the school
Supervisor	Learning centre teacher, lead teacher	Assigned learning centres only
Monitor	Teaching assistant, part-time or volunteer staff	Assigned learning centres only
Student	Enrolled student	Own data only, through the student portal
Parent	Parent or guardian	Their own child’s data only, through the parent portal

Supervisors and monitors now carry the same set of permissions. The practical difference between them is the screens and dashboards each one is given, not what they are allowed to do with a student in front of them.

What each role can do

“Assigned centres” below means the person only ever sees data for the learning centres an administrator has put them in, no matter which filters they set on screen.

Running the school

Capability	Administrator	Supervisor	Monitor	Student	Parent
Edit the school profile, terms, and timezone	Yes	No	No	No	No
Upload the school logo	Yes	No	No	No	No
Create, edit, and archive learning centres	Yes	No	No	No	No
View learning centres	All	Assigned only	Assigned only	No	No
Invite, edit, and deactivate staff	Yes	No	No	No	No
Assign supervisors and monitors to a centre	Yes	No	No	No	No
Create and manage custom roles	Yes	No	No	No	No
Open Settings	Yes	No	No	No	No

Students and PACEs

Capability	Administrator	Supervisor	Monitor	Student	Parent
Add a student, import a roster, deactivate a student	Yes	No	No	No	No
Move a student to a different centre	Yes	No	No	No	No
Promote or graduate students in bulk	Yes	No	No	No	No
Edit a student record	Yes	Assigned centres	Assigned centres	No	No
View student rosters	All centres	Assigned centres	Assigned centres	No	No
Assign PACEs to a student	Yes	Assigned centres	Assigned centres	No	No
Manage the PACE catalog and custom subjects	Yes	No	No	No	No
View their own or their child’s data	All	Assigned centres	Assigned centres	Own only	Own child only

Goal Check, grading, and attendance

Capability	Administrator	Supervisor	Monitor	Student	Parent
Set goals and mark progress	All centres	Assigned centres	Assigned centres	No	No
View Goal Check history	All	Assigned centres	Assigned centres	Own only	Own child only
Export Goal Check data	Yes	No	No	No	No
Enter and submit scores	All centres	Assigned centres	Assigned centres	No	No
Moderate scores and set the pass threshold	Yes	No	No	No	No
Mark and view attendance	All centres	Assigned centres	Assigned centres	No	No

Calendar, reports, and stock

Capability	Administrator	Supervisor	Monitor	Student	Parent
View the calendar	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Create or delete a calendar event	Yes	No	No	No	No
Generate and view reports	All centres	Assigned centres	Assigned centres	No	No
View reports across every centre, and share them by email	Yes	No	No	No	No
Generate the weekly school-wide report	Yes	No	No	No	No
View stock and check books in and out	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No
Receive stock and make adjustments	Yes	No	No	No	No

Role details

Administrator

Administrators have full access to every learning centre, every student, and every feature, including school settings, staff management, custom roles, and weekly school-wide reports. A school typically has one to three administrators.

Supervisor

Supervisors run the learning centres they are assigned to. They set goals, mark Goal Check progress, enter scores, mark attendance, log behaviour, verify homework, check books in and out, and generate reports for their own centres. They cannot admit or remove students, move a student between centres, create centres, invite staff, create calendar events, or open Settings, and they never see data from a centre they are not assigned to.

Monitor

Monitors hold the same permissions as supervisors and work the same way within their assigned centres. The role exists so a school can distinguish a lead teacher from a teaching assistant or volunteer, and the two see slightly different screens and dashboards. Like supervisors, monitors cannot admit or remove students, create calendar events, or open Settings.

Student

Students sign in to the student portal and see their own goals, progress, PACE assignments, grades, homework, attendance, calendar, and activities, along with their own profile page. What they see is read-only and limited to their own record.

Parent

Parents sign in to the parent portal and see their child’s progress, attendance, homework, behaviour, grades, and report cards, and can book meetings with their child’s teacher. What they see is read-only and limited to their own child. Parents only get access when a staff member deliberately invites them. Adding a parent email to a student record does not create the link. An administrator or supervisor can see which invitations are still outstanding, send them again, revoke one that has not been accepted, and detach a parent who was linked to the wrong student.

Custom roles

Administrators can layer custom roles on top of a user’s built-in role from Settings > Roles. A custom role is a named set of permission keys that gets added to whatever the user already has through their built-in role.

Open Settings, then Roles

Administrators can reach this page.

Create a role

Choose New role, name it, add a description, and tick the permissions you want it to grant.

Give the role to someone

On that person’s record, under Assigned Roles, add the custom role. It sits on top of their built-in role rather than replacing it.

Check the result

Their Effective Permissions card shows everything they can now do, and where each permission came from.

Every built-in role also appears in the same list, so you can see exactly what makes up the administrator, supervisor, monitor, student, and parent sets. These are marked with a System badge. They cannot be renamed or deleted, but you can copy one to create a version you can change. If you delete a custom role that people still hold, Zion tells you how many people are affected before you confirm.

An administrator cannot use custom roles to grant someone more than they hold themselves.

Every change to a role or its permissions is recorded, and you can filter that history by who made the change from Settings, Roles, View audit log.

What you can grant

Permissions are grouped by area of the app. Administrators hold all of them. Supervisors and monitors hold a smaller set limited to their own centres. Students and parents can only view their own data and the calendar.

Area	What you can grant
Students	View, add, edit, remove, view every centre, assign PACEs
Goal Check	View, set goals, mark progress, view every centre, export
Grading	View, submit scores, moderate, view every centre
Attendance	Mark, view, view every centre
Calendar	View, create a centre event, create a school-wide event, delete any event
Reports	View, generate, view every centre, share
Settings	Open Settings, edit the school profile, manage users, manage terms, manage centres
Roles	View roles, manage roles
Stock	View, manage, check out

A few of these are listed ahead of being switched on, including viewing Goal Check, grading, attendance, and reports across every centre. Where that is the case, the role editor shows the option as Coming soon rather than offering it as something you can actually grant today.

Teaching staff and users

Invite staff, assign roles, and manage user accounts

Learning centres

Assign supervisors and monitors to centres for access control