Attendance - Period Marks Calculated to Opening Mark (Secondary only)

MORNING ATTENDANCE

Firstly, some marks, e.g. FLD (field trip) are not counted as absences at all and the periods they occur in are not counted as reckonable periods for the purposes of attendance.

A pupil has to be absent in every reckonable period to be counted absent overall e.g:

present+absent+absent+absent+present = present absent+absent+absent+present+present = late present+present+absent+absent+absent = missing absent+present+present+absent+absent = missing absent+absent+absent+absent+absent = absent

An important consequence of this is that if any period is missed, the pupil may incorrectly be shown as present, late or missing.

Another thing to be kept in mind is that the calculation is done at the exact moment the mark is entered and future periods are assumed to be present. Therefore, when a pupil is absent for the whole opening, he will show as late until the moment the mark for the last period of the opening is entered. Effectively, the system is optimistic about pupils appearing.

If a pupil is marked as excluded in any period, this overrides all other periods and the pupil is taken as excluded for the whole opening.

If a pupil is marked LT2 (late after mid-opening) this is assumed to be a school decision on the outcome of the opening and it overrides all other marks in the period other than exclusions. Although logically LT2 implies the pupil turned up, SEED counts as an absence.

If a pupil is absent for the whole opening with any combination of marks which count as authorised or unauthorised absences, the mark for the first reckonable period is taken, e.g:

SEL+UNA+UNA+UNA+UNA = SEL UNA+SEL+SEL+SEL+SEL = UNA

AFTERNOON ATTENDANCE

The system will calculate attendance like this:

present+present =present absent+absent = absent absent+present = late late+present = late late+late = late present+absent = missing present+late = present etc. (this is slightly simplified as there is a wide range of possible attendance codes).

This stems from the rule that a pupil has to be absent for the whole opening to be counted absent. Otherwise the child is late if he is not there at the beginning and missing if he is not there at the end.

Since late and missing don’t count in absence stats, effectively a pupil has to be absent in every reckonable period to be absent for the opening.