Attendance and leave¶
Who does this: Class teacher · Attendance officer Where: Attendance How often: Every morning
Two processes live here, and they are joined together on purpose: taking the register, and deciding a parent's request for leave. Approving leave marks the register itself, so the school never ends up with an approved absence and a report that still says the child was missing.
Once a day, or period by period¶
A school does not have to choose one way for the whole school.
| Setting | Where |
|---|---|
| The school's mode — once a day or period by period | The school's settings |
| A grade's override | On the grade |
A grade with no override follows the school. So the primary school can mark once a morning while the secondary school marks every period, which is an ordinary arrangement in a school and needs no special handling here.
The mode can be changed in October without anything being migrated or reconstructed. A day marked once a day is simply a day with no period on it.
Taking the register¶
Attendance → Take the Register.
- Choose the class and the date. The academic year defaults to the running one.
- If the grade is marked period by period, choose the period. If it is marked once a day, leave the period empty — the system says so if you get it the wrong way round.
- The class loads with everybody marked Present.
- Change only the children who are not there.
- Press Save Register.
Why Present is the default
A teacher with thirty children marks the four who are missing. A screen that makes them confirm the other twenty-six is a screen that gets filled in at four o'clock from memory — and the attendance report is then a record of somebody's afternoon recollection.
Mark All Present resets every row, for when a screen has been half-edited.
Correcting a register¶
The same screen. Open Take the Register for a class and a date already marked, and it shows what is recorded. Change it and save: the existing rows are updated, not duplicated. A correction is the same action as an entry, so there is nothing to learn.
The six statuses¶
| Status | Means |
|---|---|
| Present | In school |
| Absent | Not in school, not explained |
| Late | Arrived late — record the minutes |
| Excused | An absence the school accepted after the fact |
| On Leave | An absence approved in advance, through a leave request |
| Early Departure | Left before the end — record the time |
Excused and On Leave are kept apart deliberately. It is what lets a chronic-absence report count the one and not the other.
Minutes late can only be recorded against a Late row. If a row is later changed to Present, the minutes go with it — otherwise a late-coming report counting rows and a report summing minutes would disagree on the same page.
Every row records who marked it and when.
Two rules the register enforces¶
The school has to have been open¶
A register row on a Friday, or on National Day, is not a harmless stray: it lowers a child's attendance percentage for a day nobody was expected. Attendance can only be recorded on a day the academic year says the school is open.
This is why the School Week and the Holidays on the academic year matter so much — see Academic calendar.
Where a year has no school week configured at all, any date inside the year is accepted. An empty week means nobody has said what the school's week is, not that the school never opens, and the first morning is the one morning the register has to work.
A closed year's register cannot be deleted¶
By anybody, including the Administrator. Once a year is closed, its register is the school's record of that year.
The class list is a snapshot¶
Each register row records the grade and section the child was in on that day. A child moved from 4A to 4B in November was in 4A in October, and October's register goes on saying so for ever. Nothing restates past rows when a child changes class.
Leave requests¶
Attendance → Leave Requests.
A leave request is a parent asking, in advance, for a child to be away.
| Field | |
|---|---|
| Enrollment | Which child, in which year |
| From and To | The range |
| Type | Sickness · Family · Travel · Other |
| Reason | Required — a request with no reason cannot be decided |
| Supporting Document | A medical note, a travel booking |
| Raised Through | School Office or Parent Portal |
| School Days | How many teaching days the range actually covers |
The process — all four steps¶
Parent asks → Class teacher decides → The register updates itself → Parent is told
- The request is raised — at the front desk, or by the parent themselves — and Submitted.
- The class teacher, or the attendance officer, presses Approve or Reject. Both record who decided and when, with a decision note.
- Approving marks the register: every teaching day in the range becomes On Leave, with weekends and holidays already taken out. The request shows how many Days Marked resulted.
- The parent is told — the message that carries the decision back arrives with the parent portal.
The third step is why this process exists at all. A school can run a perfectly good leave process on paper and still have an attendance report saying a child was absent for eleven days, because nobody went back and changed eleven register rows.
Cancelling an approved request¶
Cancel takes back exactly the rows this request wrote — not the rows around them, and not a teacher's later correction. Anything marked for another reason stays as it is.
Who approves¶
The approver defaults to the class teacher named on the section, which is one good reason to fill that in before term starts. Where no class teacher is recorded, the approver is chosen by hand.
When the year closes¶
A request still waiting for a decision when the year closes is Cancelled, with a note saying the year closed before it was decided. A decision nobody is going to make should not sit in the approval list for ever. Requests already approved or rejected are untouched — they are the record of what was decided, and it is what a parent asking in March why a day was marked absent is shown.
Statuses¶
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Draft | Being written |
| Submitted | Waiting for a decision |
| Approved | Granted — the register has been marked |
| Rejected | Refused |
| Cancelled | Withdrawn, or cancelled by the year's close. Any rows it wrote have been taken back. |
Who can do what¶
| Register | Leave requests | |
|---|---|---|
| Attendance officer / class teacher | Take and correct it | Decide them |
| Administrator | Full, including deletion — except a closed year | Full |
Narrowing a class teacher to their own class only arrives with the teacher portal. Until then the role is school-wide, which is what a school office taking the register centrally needs anyway.
Reports¶
The six attendance reports — daily, monthly, per-student percentage, per-class percentage, chronic absence and late-coming — are a later stage of the build, and deliberately not started. What exists today is a register trustworthy enough to build them on. See What is available today.