Hi, this is an old thread, so I am hoping this might get noticed. Martin, you mentioned assigning parents in the course without posting rights - I assume this is the view:course capability only... which is a great idea so parents can see information they need to help their children.
How did you actually do it? Was it a manual assignation for each parent or did you do some sort of mass update? If you used a script or similar - any chance you would be willing to share?
I am working on the same problem now, and would prefer to avoid doing the many role assignments manually.
The other thing is - it seems like this ability - to view another person's course... is fairly commonly desired - any chance of adding in a user:viewcourses capability to moodle?