NZ Schools - Processing the Administrators' Daily Roll

Note: If your school is not an NZ MOE school, the following article will apply to you instead:  International and Independent NZ Schools - Processing the Administrators' Daily Roll

Class teachers are responsible for marking the roll for their class, however it is usually up to the Office Administrator/Attendance Officer to follow up on absences. This is done via the Administrators' Daily Roll.

Note:  If a student is absent for a consecutive number of 1/2 days, an alert is sent to your Attendance Office.  The number of 1/2 days can be customised for your school in your Basic Options.  Refer to article Setting your Options for Attendance.

If your school is intending to use text messaging to notify caregivers of an unexplained absence, this needs to be turned on for both the school and the caregiver.  Refer to article Sending Text Messages to Caregivers.

PROCESSING THE DAILY ROLL

1. Navigate to the Administration menu. If you have a wide-screen device this will already be visible on the left-hand side of your screen. If not, click on the Administration menu icon at the top left-hand side of your screen.

2. Under the heading Administration select Attendance

The Administrators' Daily Roll is divided into 5 sections:

1. DATE AND TIME:  Which roll is being taken. This will default to today's date and the period that relates to the current time of day.
2. ROLLS:  The number of students present and the class rolls. These are used to check for marked/unmarked registers and for processing paper rolls.
3. ABSENCES:  Here you will see all things related to student absences
   • Viewing All Absences - view/print a list of students who are absent during the selected period. 
   • Evacuation Report - view/print or download a list of all students by class or whole school showing their present, absent or unmarked attendance status.  This can be used in conjunction with the Full School Directory in the event of an emergency evacuation.
   • Tallys - help you keep track of your student numbers.  
   • Pending Explanation - shows those students who are absent at roll taking time but their whereabouts is unexplained

DATE AND TIME

The attendance block (e.g. Morning / Afternoon or Period 1 / Period 2 etc) will default according to the time of day. Click on the block button to change from the default. 

To adjust a roll for a different day, change the date.  NB:  Text messaging from the daily roll is only available for the current day.  When adjusting the date, texting messaging will be disabled.

CLASS (or alternative homeroom label) ROLLS

At a glance the administrator can see if the roll has been taken for a class. Green signifies a completed roll and white an unmarked roll. From here, an administrator can process a paper roll for a class on behalf of a teacher.

1.  Click on the class to open up the roll. All students will be displayed.

2.  The Administrator/Attendance Officer has the option of viewing the roll for either a single day or a full week.  Note - If you wish to utilise the WEEK option, please contact Customer Support to make this feature available.  You can set your preferred view as the default.  Use the buttons provided to toggle between the two different views.  The roll can only be taken for the previously selected day.

Clicking DAY provides larger student profiles for easier recognition.

Clicking WEEK provides historical data and easily identifiable attendance patterns.  

3.  Click MAKE <current view> MY DEFAULT  to set the current view as your preferred view.  This button will only be displayed when toggling away from your preferred view.

PROCESSING A ROLL USING DAY VIEW

1.  Sort the class by whichever sequence your paper roll appears in.

2.  Mark each student or alternatively mark only those who are absent and use the Mark All buttons to complete the others. To mark a student Present, click the profile. The student will display as Green. To select an alternative code click on the ? box and select the code from the drop down list.

3.  To record a reason for the absence, click the Pencil icon, enter the message and click OK.

4.  To mark the remaining attendance in bulk select the Mark all as buttons.

The Present button will mark all unmarked students as Present. The Offsite will mark all unmarked students as Q - School Trip, F - Offsite Course (e.g. technology), or J - Justified.

Select the code, enter the reason and click MARK ALL AS OFFSITE. Adjustments can be made to individual children prior to clicking the Next button.

5.  Click NEXT to preview the attendance.

6.  Compare the preview counts against your paper roll and either CONFIRM or go BACK.

PROCESSING A ROLL USING WEEK VIEW

1.  Sort the class by whichever sequence your paper roll appears in.  To sort, click on the arrow in the column heading.

2.  Mark each student or alternatively mark only those who are absent and use the Mark all as buttons to complete the others. To mark a student Present, click the profile. The student will display as Green.

To select an alternative code click on the ? box and select the code from the drop down list.

3.  To record a reason for the absence, click the Pencil icon, enter the message and click OK.

4.  To mark the remaining attendance in bulk select the Mark all as buttons.

The Present button will mark all unmarked students as Present. The Offsite will mark all unmarked students as Q - School Trip, F - Offsite Course (e.g. technology), or J - Justified.

Select the code, enter the reason and click MARK ALL AS OFFSITE. Adjustments can be made to individual children prior to clicking the Next button.

5.  Click NEXT to preview the attendance.

6.  Compare the preview counts against your paper roll and either CONFIRM or go BACK.

FIXING A ROLL MARKED IN ERROR

If a school, group or class roll has been marked in error, an administrator has the ability to change or clear the codes in bulk.  This can be carried out via the administrator's daily roll or via any group roll.

Clearing codes will, in most cases, take into account any previously entered future absences and leave these remaining.

Note:  Clearing or replacing codes MUST be carried out from the group in which the codes were originally marked.  e.g. if the roll was taken via the class it must be fixed via the class,   if the roll was taken via an autogroup it must be fixed via the autogroup.   This is a safeguard to prevent the changing of intentionally marked future codes.

1.  Click on the class to open up the roll.  All students will be displayed.

2.  Click CHANGE CODE to replace the existing code with another.  

3.  The change attendance popup will be displayed.

4.  Select the code you wish to change (From),  select the replacement code (To) and the reason for the change.  Click OK to update.  By selecting the From code, those students with alternative codes will be left unchanged.

5.  To completely remove the attendance for a group or class, click CLEAR CODES.  

6.  The clear codes popup will be displayed.  The popup will list any students who had their attendance marked prior to the group roll being taken (i.e. future absence) and will not clear their marks.   These can be done manually if required.

7.  Enter the reason for change and click OK to clear the marks. Note:  The Clear Code process will not proceed to the confirmation screen as it is removing attendance marks and setting the class roll back to unmarked (i.e. removing the green roll marked indicator).

ABSENCES

PENDING EXPLANATION

The Pending Explanation table provides a list of all student's who are showing as Unknown (?) after the attendance for their class has been marked. This will not include students whose class attendance has not yet been done.

1.  To mark those you are aware of:

• • Quickly find the student using the First Name or Last Name filter feature.

• • Enter the reason for their absence in the Notes column and Save.
  • Click the All Day slider if they will be away for the entire day (this slider will only show for the first period of the day.)  
  • If it is NOT the first period of the day the All Day slider will be replaced with the attendance marks for up to 4 previous periods.  (i.e. for schools using Morning/Afternoon the morning mark will show when the afternoon attendance is being taken.  For schools using multiple periods the past 4 periods will show if available)

• • Click the appropriate code from the Quick List.
  • If the code does not show in the Quick List click the More codes icon for the remaining codes.

       

2.  If a phone call to a parent is required, click VIEW to obtain the contact information for this student.

3.  If SMS text messaging is activated you are able to send a text to the designated mobile phone numbers for the contacts on this student. 'Receives Text Messages' is set as one of the Relationship fields when adding your contacts. To quickly check if a contact will receive a text, click VIEW. The text icon will be displayed if the contact is set to receive texts.

Note:  As per MOE requirements, any 'Unknown (?)' codes are no longer automatically changed to 'T (truant)' as the Ministry expects these to be manually edited after intervention.  Therefore it is important to complete the process once the reason for absence has been established.

SENDING A TEXT MESSAGE FOR UNEXPLAINED ABSENCES

1.  To send text messages, click SELECT ALL UNSENT.  This will turn on the Send SMS slider on all students in the list. You can adjust these sliders if you wish to not send a text to a particular student.  Perhaps you are aware that the student will be arriving late.

2.  To clear your selection, click DESELECT ALL.

3.  If a student has no caregivers who are set to receive texts, their slider will be disabled.  A tool tip over the deactivated slider explains this. 

4.  Click SEND SMS TO ALL SELECTED to send the texts.

5.  A tick will indicate that a text for this student has been sent.  This is particularly helpful if some classes have not yet marked their attendance.  You can clearly see, which students have already been processed and which have not.  These ticks will carry forward to any roll later in the day, so you can identify and send a text for students absent in a later period who may have been present in the morning.

6.  A student marked with a tick, can have a further text sent if necessary, by manually clicking the slider.

7.  The first reply sent to texts will come via email to the designated email address.  This email provides the full student details for easy identification.  Clicking on the link in the email will take you directly to the administrator's daily roll.

VIEW ALL ABSENCES

1.  Clicking VIEW ALL ABSENCES will display a list of all students who have a code that is not (P or ?). Codes can be adjusted and notes can be added from here if errors have been made i.e. a student marked absent is actually at school.

To adjust a code

2.  Click on the existing code and select the correct code from the drop down list.

3.  Enter the reason for the change of code and click OK.

4.  To add or change a Note click on the Pencil icon and make your changes.

5.  Select TODAY'S ABSENTEE LIST to produce a list of all students currently absent for the period selected and the reason for their absence. Printing this will assist in the roll taking process in the event of an emergency evacuation.  Note:  This will only be accurate if the roll has been taken for all classes.

5.  Select PENDING EXPLANATION LIST if you have a large list of unexplained absences and phone calls need to be made away from your computer.

6.  Click BACK TO ATTENDANCE to return to the daily roll.

EVACUATION REPORT

1.  Clicking EVACUATION REPORT will display a list of all students in their classes.  Students will be divided into sections showing Present, Absent and Unmarked according to their attendance status.   This report is 'as at' the time it is run.

Present and Unmarked students have columns for ticking or signing off that they are accounted for, who collected them if leaving the school and the time they were collected.    

Absent students show the absence code and reason for their absence.

2.  The report can be divided into Homerooms or run for the Whole School as one group.  

3.  Printing / Downloading can be actioned for all homerooms at once with page breaks between classes

or individual homerooms using the buttons provided.

4.  Downloading a .csv or Excel file for all homerooms will create a sheet per homeroom.

TALLY

The Tally show a count, by attendance code, of all students who have been absent for the specified day.