For schools
E-signatures for schools
Short answer
Sign PDF suits schools, nurseries and clubs that need a parent or carer to sign a specific form, such as a trip permission slip or a medical consent, on their phone without an app. Each signed slip comes back sealed with the parent's name, email and signing time. For collecting one form from a whole year group at once, a web form tool with bulk sending is usually a better fit.
Updated 25 October 2026
What do schools send home to be signed?
Trips are the most familiar: a permission slip for each child, often with a medical section, emergency contact and a box for dietary needs. Residential trips add a code of conduct and sometimes a payment plan. Then there are photo and video consent forms, consent for medication to be given at school, and home-school agreements at the start of the year.
The staff side is quieter but matters as much: employment contracts, policy acknowledgements for safeguarding and acceptable IT use, and agreements with visiting coaches or tutors.
- Trip permission slips
- Medical and medication consent forms
- Photo and video consent
- Home-school agreement
- Staff contracts and policy acknowledgements
- Agreements with visiting coaches and tutors
Why getting parents to sign is fiddly
Paper slips go home in book bags and come back crumpled, late or not at all. A trip with 28 children can have five slips missing on the morning of departure. Parents sign on their phones between other things, so anything that needs a printer or an account gets put off.
Separated families add a second signer. Some schools ask for both parents' consent for certain activities, and the two parents may not share an email or a home. Each needs their own link.
How a school sends a permission slip with Sign PDF
This works best for one-off or sensitive forms where each family gets their own copy.
- Upload the slip as a Word file or PDF. Sign PDF places a signature, name and date box beside Parent or Carer.
- Add checkboxes for consents ('I consent to emergency medical treatment') and free-text fields for allergies and emergency contact.
- Save it as a template, then send it to each family with the child's name in the personal message.
- Set an expiry date the day before the trip and switch on reminders.
- Each parent confirms a code from their email and signs on their phone. The sealed slip comes back to the teacher.
What does it cost a school?
Each family's slip is one sent document. A class of 30 is 30 documents, so Light at $5 a month for 2 documents is only useful for a handful of individual forms, such as a single medical consent or a coach's agreement.
Full at $10 a month gives unlimited documents and templates, which is what a class teacher or trip lead would need. There is no per-parent charge and no annual contract, so a school could take Full for the month of a residential trip and cancel afterwards.
Where Sign PDF falls short for schools
We have no bulk send. Sending a slip to 120 families means 120 sends from a template, which is slow. A web form tool, or the forms built into your school's parent communication system, collects the same information from a whole year group in one step. We also have no web forms of our own and no SMS or WhatsApp delivery.
We do not take trip payments, connect to school management systems, or offer team seats for several staff. Signing pages are in English only. If your parents need forms in other languages, factor that in.
Questions people ask
Can parents sign a permission slip on their phone?
Yes. They open the email link in their phone browser, enter a six-digit code sent to the same email, and sign with a finger. No app or account is needed.
Can I send one slip to the whole class at once?
No. We do not offer bulk send. You can save the slip as a template and send it to each family, or use a form tool for whole-class collection.
Can both parents sign the same consent form?
Yes. Add both parents as signers with their own email addresses. Each gets their own link and both appear on the certificate.
Can parents fill in medical details on the slip?
Yes. Add free-text fields for allergies or medication and checkboxes for each consent. What the parent enters is written into the sealed PDF.
Upload a document and watch the boxes land
See every signature, initial and date box placed before you sign up. Sending starts at $5 a month, monthly, cancel any time.
Upload a document