Admin Attendance: Individual Attendance

You got here by opening Admin Attendance, possibly from the TWebSchAdmin Landing Page. Admin Attendance defaults to Individual Attendance. 

The page contains a Student Search panel, Student Information, and two sections - Attendance Details and Phone List.
If a student has not been selected, the Student Information in the Selected Student frame on the top is replaced with the message "No student selected." The Attendance Details grid is empty. When you select a student in the Search Results list on the left side of the screen, that student's data displays. The selected Participant's Photo, Name, Gender, Age, Track, Status, Grade, Student Number, OEN, and Year-to-Date Absences and Lates display. The Student's Information and the Attendance Details become visible. The Attendance Details panel is expanded by default and the Phone List is visible when you expand the second accordion panel.

Student Search Panel

The Student Search panel consists of the Parameters section and Result List. The Parameters section has Regular and Advanced views. The Regular view is the default when the page loads. You swap the views using Advanced and Regular buttons.
The Regular view contains the Name field and Search and Advanced buttons. The search criteria is some part of the student's full name (First or Last name or both). The Advanced view contains these elements:

1. Radio buttons for name searching Preferred and Legal. 
2. Fields for Surname and First Name. The Surname field may facilitate search by characters in any position of the student's name: Enter part of the name, Click Search, and our application finds all the students containing the entered letters in the surname.
3. The Status checkboxes display choices of Active, PreReg, and Inactive. The combination of Active and PreReg is the default. The Status calculation is performed for the current date. FYI: This value does not depend on the dates selected in the Add Attendance Records pop-up window and is changed only if you select another student or activate the current one in the Individual or Class/Group Attendance page. The total absences and lates are calculated from the student's Ministry reported Attendance
4. Student No, OEN, Gender and Grade are also possible, optional, search fields.

Attendance Details Accordion Bar

The top part of the screen displays common student data: the Student's Photo, Name, Homeroom, Track, Grade, Age, Gender, Status, Student No, OEN,  Absences, Lates, and all applicable alerts in the following order: Medical Peril, Sheltered Student, and  Attendance.

The student’s status is calculated and displayed as per the current date. This value does not depend on the dates selected in the Add Attendance Records popup window and is changed only if the user selects another student or activates the current one in the Individual or Class/Group Attendance page. The total absences and lates are calculated from the student's Ministry-reported attendance.

The Attendance Rollup procedure examines the student's Attendance records for each day to determine if the student was late for school (as opposed to just late for a class) and absent for an entire morning or afternoon). The rollup is always performed automatically whenever you save Attendance records. If a total number cell is empty for Absent or Lates, it means that the student does not have Absent or Late attendance records.  A zero will be displayed for the total.

Attendance Details Section

The functionality of this section includes display and modification of Attendance details for an individual student.

Add Attendance Records

When you click Add, the Add Attendance Records panel appears. Fields for Attendance Dates, Report As, Reason, and Entry Mode are available. An additional field to enter the Period or Time the student returns to the school or the time the student Signs In or Signs Out of the school are available when Period or Sign In or Sign Out are selected as the Entry Mode. The Communication Details of the Absence or Late can be noted utilizing the available fields.

Attendance Dates

Attendance Dates determine the period for adding Attendance for the selected student. If the defaulted current date is not an Attendance-taking date, or the student is inactive on this date, the closest earlier valid date appears. Attendance records are generated for all Attendance-taking dates within the selected interval when the student is active or preregistered.

Note: A Preregistered student will be activated on the earliest Attendance-taking date within the interval.

Report As

Select which Attendance code should be applied to the newly added Attendance record. The Attendance codes are A – Absent, E – Excused, G – G day, L – Late, and N – Non Instructional day. 

Absent

Marks a student's absence during the whole period. These times are displayed in the Attendance Details grid and might be edited. For example, if Period 1 lasts from 09:00 till 10:00 and Period 2 is from 10:00 to 11:00; and the student signs in at 10:30 his records will be:

Period 1: Absent from 09:00 to 10:00. (Reported as A)

Period 2: Late for the class. Reported as L from 10:00 to 10:30. 

Excused

The Excused absence time might be marked either from the beginning of a period or at the end of it. The rules are:
All Day Entry Mode: Records for all periods will be generated with given From and To values. Nevertheless, if for some periods From is the start time and To is within the period, the E for this period will be replaced with L.

Period Entry Mode: An Excused attendance record will be generated for the given period with From and To within the period. If you mark an absence from the start of a period, the record is marked as L instead of E.

Sign In Entry Mode: The application generates Attendance E records from the beginning of the day up to the given sign-in time. If you mark an absence from the start of a period, this period is marked as L instead of E.

Sign Out Entry Mode: The application generates Attendance E records starting from the time given. If you mark an absence from the start of a period, this period is marked as L instead of E. This Report As value is usually used for sign-outs. However, it could be used in combination with All Day or Sign Out Entry Mode if a student leaves part way through a period in order to go on a field trip. This would ensure that all of the subsequent periods show an attendance code of Excused, rather than Absent. As a rule, you only use Excused if the students were going to be attending some school-sponsored function and didn't want to have absences recorded. 

This Report As value is usually used for sign-outs. However, it could be used in combination with All Day or Sign Out Entry Mode if a student leaves part way through a period in order to go on a field trip. This would ensure that all of the subsequent periods show an attendance code of Excused rather than absent. As a rule, the user only uses Excused if the students were going to be attending some school sponsored function and didn't want to have absences recorded. 

G Day

This is a Grant day. On these days student absences are not counted. Attendance records will show G rather than A. 

Late

Select this code in the Report As box having in mind that the student is late for the class after he/she has been already recorded present for another class. Choosing this option disables all Entry Mode options except Period. These records do not represent absence from school. The To time in the grid is populated with the current time. This differentiates late for the class records from late for the school.
In contrast to it, the Absent code with Sign In entry mode will result in an absence code being applied to any period that was completely missed and a late code being applied to a class that has not yet ended on sign-in time. In this case, the To time would be recorded as the sign-in time. 

N Day

This value is used only for part-time students in elementary schools to denote non-instructional; or for students in an Intensive Behavioral Intervention Program. It becomes necessary when such students are scheduled into classes on days, or half-days on which they are not expected to attend. Recording N for Period Attendance will result in the students' Attendance Card reports showing N for half or full days when the students are not to attend. Attempting to use this for secondary students who have Classes associated with Course sections for the Period or Periods in question will result in a message indicating that this is not allowed since such Classes are, by definition, instructional. The Attendance Cards for part-time secondary students will automatically show N for half-days on which the students have no scheduled instructional Classes. Therefore, for these students, no action needs to be taken.

Reason

The Reason drop-down box displays possible reasons for the Absence as defined in Reason by Attendance validation table. Each reason within a school is associated with one or more Attendance Codes. The drop-down box displays only the reasons valid for the selected Attendance Code. The reasons in the drop-down box are also filtered by the date(s) selected so that reasons that are no longer valid for the selected dates won't be used in error. To be included in the list, the reason should have the Start Date earlier or equal to the first selected date and the End Date later or equal to the last selected date. 
 

Entry Mode

The entry mode selected determines which periods will have Attendance recorded against them. Possible values are:

• All Day - Generated Attendance will apply to the whole school day. The application determines how many Periods there are for the particular day based on the timeline stored in the Calendar for the selected Track.
• AM - Generate attendance for all AM periods.
• PM - Generate attendance for all PM periods.
  • AM and PM are needed to generate Attendance records for all AM or PM periods for the students with modified programs. AM and PM options do not appear for elementary schools since elementary schools already have AM and PM as Periods.
• Period - Generated Attendance will apply to the selected Period. The list of Periods is defined for the student's Track and the timeline for the Day as defined in the school calendar. The drop down box of Periods is visible.
• Sign In and Sign Out - When this is selected, an edit box appears. In this box, you can enter the time at which the student is signing in for the day, or returning after having signed out.

Communication Details

This area is optional. Any information entered here will end up in Attendance records created during the generation of Attendance. It only applies to newly generated Attendance records: When you click Save, new records appear on the screen. Each of those gets the values of Phoned, Note Received, See, and Comment, which are defined in the Communication Details group. You can close the Add Attendance Records panel, modify them individually in the Attendance Details grid and save again. The Comment field maximum length is 80 characters. 

Generation Rules

When you click Save, new records for each selected date are generated for the selected student. The number and type of Attendance records depend on the Entry Mode and the student's timetable structure as per the following examples: 

• Entry Mode All Day – a separate Absence record will be created for each Period in which the student was Absent.
• Entry Mode Sign In – the module will generate a 'Late' record for the Period in which the student signed in, as well as a separate Absence record for each preceding period that was missed.

An Example

If a student is marked Absent for the entire day and later is marked Late or signs in, then the appropriate changes are made to his record. The Period Attendance 'A' for the Period in which he arrives is changed to L and subsequent Period A's are deleted.

If, after some attendance has already been recorded, the day is determined to be a Grant Day, then Grant absences would appear as displayed in the chart below:

 
The rolled-up value be for these examples would be:
 Rolled up to A in the AM, G in the PM
 Rolled up to P in the AM, G in the PM
 Rolled up to P in the AM, G in the PM
 Rolled up to A in the AM
 Rolled up to P in the AM

• If the student has PreReg status and the Entry Mode is Sign In with an Absent, Late or Excused Attendance Code, the student will be activated and his status in the Student Info will be changed from PreReg to Active.  
• There are no special system requirements for entering Attendance data for SAL students. Nevertheless, you should be aware about the rules controlling SAL students. Particularly, in the case where a SAL student is taking credit courses; the school must take Attendance for the Periods the student is Absent or Late. If half of the student's day will appear without an A or L after the roll up, it will be replaced with G in the Daily Attendance Report. 
• For students having a prolonged absence, Absence codes are entered each day, for all periods, for the student.

Another example

Suppose a student were to sign out during the middle of Period 5 at 13:30. Even though the Absent code is used to record this activity, the student was Present for part of Period 5 and really shouldn't be recorded Absent for that Period. Yet, she didn't stay for the entire Period. Therefore, the Admin Attendance module converts the A to E and applies the Excused code to Period 5 but retains the Absent code for Period 6.

Period 5: Absent from 13:30 to 14:00 and, therefore, excused (Reported as E).

Period 6: Absent from 14:00 to 15:00 (Reported as A).

If the student has been marked as Absent in the beginning of the Period (e.g. from 13 to 13:30), the Report As value will be replaced with L. Nevertheless, the user is able to replace the Report As value suggested by the module with any value. So the student might be marked as Absent during a part of the Period, might be excused in the beginning, or be late during the whole Period.

When Phoned and/or Note Received are selected in the optional Communication Details group, the Phoned and/or Note checkbox in the generated records of this grid will also be selected.

Attendance Roll-Up

More information on how the Attendance roll-up procedure converts the entered Period Attendance data into the Daily Attendance format required by the Ontario Ministry of Education is here.

Attendance Details

The grid contains all Attendance records for the selected student for the current school year or semester (based on your school's preferences). Each line corresponds to one Period of the Track. All fields except Date, Period and Class are editable. Our module automatically converts Absent to Late or Excused when the you enter From or To times values

Phone List Panel

The Phone List section contains Contact information related to your selected student. Columns for Title, Guardian status, Name, Relationship, Emergency and Closure (the order in which to call contacts in those events), Telecom Details and Remarks. Displays the information for each of your student's Contacts where the Start Date is less than, or equals, the current Date and the End Date is null, equal to, or greater than the current date.

Note: Only the Contacts for which Pickup Access Flag is On will display.