This article explains how to bulk edit attendance marks for students, detailing the processes available on the Bulk Edit Marks Standard and Advanced pages. It covers permissions required, how to filter student groups, and the different options for changing attendance marks, including bulk actions for setting marks to present, late, or absent. It also addresses limitations regarding future marks and the inability to delete marks in bulk.
You can edit marks for more than one student at a time, or for whole class, from the Students > Attendance Registers > Bulk Edit Marks pages. You can use whichever page best suits your needs.
Please note that once added, it is not possible to delete attendance marks in bulk - you would need to follow these instructions: Delete an attendance mark
Please note
You won't be able to edit any marks we migrated from your previous system from this page - you'll need to use the Edit Imported Marks page instead. See how to do this here: Editing attendance marks migrated from your old MIS and adding missing marks
Permissions
You will need the Student Profile: Action: Attendance: Administer All Students permission. If you don't have permission, you'll need to ask your admin team to give you permission using these instructions.
How the pages work
On both pages:
- The table will default to show today's date and the smallest group of students at your school change these settings using the filters.
- You can click into the filters to select whether to include student's year group and registration form as columns in the table.
- You can select multiple year groups in the filter, so you can edit marks across a whole key stage!
- Tick the boxes next to students and use the Bulk action button to send an email, SMS or letter to students or guardians, and in-app messages to guardians. You can also add students to a custom group or intervention.
- Follow these instructions to select cells to update, then click the Bulk action button to select Bulk Fill and change marks in bulk.
- Bulk change marks, or set marks to present, late or absent. You can also change the note using the bulk actions.
The Bulk Edit Marks Standard page
This page will show you a list of students, and the attendance marks recorded for their lessons, internal exclusions and interventions.
Click on the green filter option at the top to choose a date range and student group, and choose to display the Year Group and Registration Form of each student.
No profile pictures and compact rows mean you can see and take action with many students without needing to scroll.
If your school uses timetable periods, each attendance mark will align with the correct timetable period. Column headers display as periods by default. If no periods are set up, you'll see the timeslot.
- A green tick means the student was present.
- A yellow clock means the student was late.
- A dash means no mark was recorded.
- A letter indicates the student was absent and for what reason - you can see more about the available marks here: Attendance codes and how they count towards statutory attendance
As well as classes, marks for Internal Exclusions and Interventions are also all shown in the same column, so you can see if a particular student was meant to be out of lesson. If a student is registered in more than one session at once, all sessions will show (so you might see more than one mark in some slots).
You can also view Attendance Notes or log a Planned Absence right from this page - just hover over a mark in the table.
The Bulk Edit Marks Advanced page
This page will show you a list of students, and the attendance marks recorded for their lessons, internal exclusions and interventions.
Click on the green filter option at the top to choose a date range and student group, and choose to display the Year Group and Registration Form of each student. You can also toggle lessons, internal exclusions and interventions.
See the profile picture of each student to quickly identify them. Each column shows the attendance mark recorded for each session. You can see more about the available marks here: Attendance codes and how they count towards statutory attendance
- Green marks mean the student was present.
- A yellow mark means the student was late.
- An orange mark means the student was Authorised Absent.
- A red mark means the student was Unauthorised Absent.
You can also view or add Attendance Notes - just hover over a mark in the table.
Rather than aligning multiple timetabled sessions with your timetable periods like on the Standard page, the Advanced page will show one column for each session. The column headers will show the actual scheduled time of the lesson, intervention or internal exclusion.
- If you have two events that take place at the same time for at least one of the students selected, you'll have two columns with the same time, for example, an intervention and a lesson. Students enrolled in both sessions will have a mark in both, students only enrolled in one will have one mark, and one blank, uneditable field. This is because they aren't enrolled in the session, so can't have an attendance mark.
- If the student group you're looking at contains students in more than one class (such as a year group), you'll see multiple columns with similar times and blank marks, as the student wasn't in that lesson.
Top Tip: Want to minimise viewing empty fields? We recommend filtering down to a more focused student group in the filters.
If a student is enrolled in two sessions that happen at the same time you might see the attendance mark for this student's class show in the other column for the same time. For example, here I have two 9-9.50 slots - the mark for the maths lesson is showing in column 1 for Andy Baily, but 2 for Elsie Anderson, because she has an intervention at the same time.
Because of this, please check which marks you're editing when making any changes. Top Tip: Want to minimise errors? We recommend filtering down to look at one session type e.g. lessons in the filters.
If you select a specific class in the filters, this page will only show marks for the class rather than all these students' marks for the day. This way, you can bulk change marks for just this lesson quickly without changing the marks for the other lessons in the day.
Editing the marks
Editing the marks in bulk
Along with many other bulk edit options such as emailing guardians, there are four options to bulk edit marks:
- Bulk change marks
- Bulk set present
- Bulk set late
- Bulk set absent
Just select the students to change marks for, then click the Bulk action button to select which option to use.
Select Bulk Change Marks to change all marks with the same attendance code to a different code. For example, if you want to change all your N codes to O codes just select the options below, then click Save Changes.
Select Bulk set Present, Bulk set Late, or Bulk Set Absent, to change all selected marks to present late or absent.
In the slide over, untick any roll calls and periods you don't want to amend the mark for.
At the bottom of the slide over you can then choose whether to overwrite all the marks or only fill in the blank marks, then click Bulk Set Marks.
Please note: Bulk editing cannot be done for future registers. Please instead schedule planned absences for the relevant students. To see how to do this, click here.
Please note that you can't update the attendance notes using this feature - you'll need to use the bulk actions shown above to do this.
To bulk edit, you can either:
- use the shift key to select fields in a rectangle
- click on a field and drag until they are all selected
- hold down your control key and select the values you want to change
Once you have selected the (editable) cells to update, click the Bulk action button to change the cell values in bulk.
Select the mark in the drop-down in the pop up, then click Submit.
Changing a single mark
You can change a single attendance mark for a student from a register. Just click the mark you'd like to change.
Click Edit in the slide over, then change the mark or note, or both.
To change a single mark from the Advanced page, just click on the mark you want to change and select the attendance mark.
Please note that you can't update the attendance notes using this feature - you'll need to use the bulk actions to do this.
Can we edit attendance marks for the future?
Our recommended way of entering future marks is to add a Planned Absence. These can be added for any student group, for any period of time, to automatically fill the register with the right attendance code.
Although the pre-fill planned absence mark will not pull through until the register is opened, you can still view these marks on either Bulk Edit Marks pages.
Can we edit future marks from the Bulk Edit Marks pages?
You can edit marks for future lessons today from either Bulk Edit Marks page using the bulk actions or by clicking into a mark.
For marks for dates after today's date, you won't be able to use the bulk actions, and clicking into each mark will take a long time. This is why we would recommend using a Planned Absence in this instance.
Once the register opens, if the pre-fill mark is changed in the register, this will update the Bulk Edit Marks pages. If you change the mark on a Bulk Edit Marks page, it will update it across the system.
On the student's profile, you'll be able to see the mark for the register, even though it hasn't yet been opened by the teacher.
Please note that if you were to change the mark back to a blank mark from a Bulk Edit Marks page, the register will still show on the student's profile.
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