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.

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.

If your school has the Hero Premier package, caregivers are able to report an absence from the caregiver app.  This will show as a note on all attendance taking screens.  Refer to article Processing Attendance Notifications Reported by 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 3 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
   • Process Arrivals - adjust the attendance for students arriving late or returning after a short absence i.e. appointment and produce a late slip
   • Process Departures - adjust the attendance for students leaving early and produce a leaving slip
   • Viewing All Absences - view/print a list of students who are or have been absent at some part of the day.   
   • 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 unknown.

DATE AND TIME

Schools with a multiple period attendance structure will see the attendance periods displayed.  The attendance period (e.g. Morning/Afternoon or Period 1/Period 2 etc) will default according to the time of day.  Click on the period button to change from the default.   

To adjust a roll for a different day, change the date.  Note: 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 that the teacher has marked the roll and white an unmarked roll.  From here, an administrator is also able to process a roll on behalf of a teacher.

1.  Click on the class to open up the roll.  All current 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.  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 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.  These buttons will vary according to the school jurisdiction.

or

The Present button will mark all unmarked students as Present. Offsite or School Business will mark all unmarked students using the offsite codes available for your school's jurisdiction.

Select the code (if not already populated), enter the reason and the time the class went offsite.  NB:  The 'effective from' time will default to the period start time for the first mark of the period.  Click MARK ALL AS OFFSITE/SCHOOL BUSINESS. 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.

or

depending on Jurisdiction

The Present button will mark all unmarked students as Present. Offsite or School Business will mark all unmarked students using the offsite codes available for your school's jurisdiction.

Select the code (if multiple offsite codes exist), enter the reason and the time the class went offsite.  NB:  The 'effective from' time will default to the period start time for the first mark of the period.  Click MARK ALL AS OFFSITE/SCHOOL BUSINESS. 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.

UPDATING STUDENT ATTENDANCE VIA A CLASS

An Office Administrator can amend the attendance for the entire class or an individual student via the class roll.  This is particularly useful if several students require change or the entire class is going to or returning from an offsite event.

1. Click the required Period button as defined in your school's timetable structure.  This will be absent if a single period structure exists.

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

3. To change the attendance mark for the entire group or class, use the Mark all as PRESENT or Mark all as OFFSITE/SCHOOL BUSINESS options.

or

4.  Enter the reason for the change (if going offsite) and the effective time (this defaults to the current time).  This provides an accurate movement record for this student for the day.  Click MARK ALL AS PRESENT or MARK ALL AS OFFSITE/SCHOOL BUSINESS.

5. When you have made all the changes required, click NEXT. 

6. You will see the confirmation page. Re-check the student counts. Click CONFIRM to proceed or BACK to make a correction.

CORRECTING STUDENT ATTENDANCE VIA A CLASS

Mistakes do happen and if the attendance for the whole class has been marked incorrectly, it can be corrected without generating new movement records for the students involved.  This is done in the same manner as above but by ensuring that the effective time used matches that of the original mark, the original mark will be replaced.  The effective time for the first mark of any period relates to the start of that period as per the attendance structure. To find an effective time for any other movement, check the movement record for an individual student in that group.

ABSENCES

The absences section contains all features related to the daily absences.  From here you can process late arrivals, early leavers, unexplained absences, text caregivers, check the absentee tallys and produce absentee and evacuation reports.

PROCESS ARRIVALS / PROCESS LEAVERS

To better clarification of these process, we have created separate articles.  Click on the relevant link to view these processes.

Processing the Attendance or Late or Returning Students

Processing Attendance for Students Leaving Early

VIEW ALL ABSENCES

1.  Clicking this button will display a list of all students who are currently absent or have been absent at some part of the day.

Type

• Whole Day (the default type) - the student is away for the whole day unless they arrive late
• Late - the student was absent but has now arrived and is coded as Present
• Timed - the student arrived at school and has left again.

Reason - the coded reason for the student's absence

From - the student is absent from this time (this will default for the start of the first period for those students who are pending explanation.

To - the time the student arrived at school and was recorded as Present.  For students who have not yet arrived, this field will be replaced by the Process Arrivals icon.  Click the icon to action the process.

Comment - the reason for the student's absence

2.  Sort your absences list by clicking on the arrows beside any of the column headings.  The arrows will show when you hover over the heading.

3.  Filter your absences list by entering the required filter values in the areas directly below the headings.

4.  Select CURRENT ABSENTEES 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.

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.  P denotes a Partial absence.

In this example, 6 students are currently absent. 2 students were absent but have arrived late and are now recorded as Leave for their period of absence.

PENDING EXPLANATION

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

1.  If your school has the Hero Premier package, a caregiver is able to send an attendance notification to the school.   If this has happened a caregiver note icon will be visible.

Click the Note icon to view and/or copy the note.

2.  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 appropriate code from the Quick List.  (this will consist of the most commonly used attendance codes for your country/area)
• If the code does not show in the Quick List click the More codes icon for the remaining codes.
•  

3.  If the student arrives late, click the LATE icon to process the student's arrival.     

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

5.  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.

SENDING A TEXT MESSAGE FOR ABSENCES PENDING EXPLANATION

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.