Attendance FAQ

This article covers the most common queries that schools have regarding Attendance in Arbor. If you can't find an answer to your question in this article, check the Attendance FAQ's section of our Help Centre here.

Can we lock attendance registers?

No, it's not possible to lock or freeze attendance marks completely once they’ve been entered, to prevent them from being overwritten or changed.

However, you can lock absence marks that have been added as part of a planned absence, so teachers can't change them to N in registers: Restricting the Available Attendance Marks

All mark changes are recorded in the student profile audit log, so you can track if a teacher is making changes after the register is considered to have closed.

How do I mark students who are learning remotely from home?

For students who are not attending school, you may be running online classes or supplying work to them. The DfE does not collecty information on attendance for online classes and work. As such, any students who are not physically present on-site should be marked with the correct absence code, regardless if they are attending online classes.

We advise only marking students as present if they are physically in school to prevent safeguarding issues (e.g. in case of a fire evacuation).

Although it is not currently possible to track attendance for online classes in Arbor, we integrate with a number of distance learning providers - you can see how to set up a connection here.

When does a student become a persistent absentee?

When a student's annual attendance drops below 90%, they are considered a persistent absentee. To see a list of your persistent absentees, go to Students > Attendance > Absentees > Persistent Absentees. 

In a normal school year, the DfE says that students should attend at least 380 sessions or 190 days. For more information on this, see page 17 of the DfE guidance here. With this in mind, a student who misses 38 sessions or 19 days or more throughout the academic year will be classes as a persistent absentee (as their attendance drops below 90%).

Can a student stop being a persistent absentee?

If a student's attendance improves throughout the year and it goes above 90%, they will no longer be classes as a persistent absentee.

Arbor will calculate Persistently Absent students on a year-to-current-date bases. For example, if the date was 29th September and your school year began on 1st September, Arbor will calculate students who have missed 10% or more during this time.

Can we turn off the 'Mark All Blank As...' button on the register?

No, it is not possible to disable the Mark All Blank As... drop-down option when taking attendance from the Take Register page.

Can we add new attendance codes to mark students with?

It is not possible for schools to add their own attendance codes. This is because these codes are derived from the DfE, and must map back to one of the values on the list of agreed codes outlined in the CBDS (the DfE's common data set), to be reported in the census. All schools must also have these codes only in order to match data across schools to enable aggregate reporting on the MAT MIS.

Can we sign in staff, student, or parent visitors?

Arbor does not have a built-in sign-in system for visitors. However, you can integrate Arbor with third-party systems that do offer this service, such as Entrysign. You can see a list of partners and how to set up the integration here.

To take attendance for students, they must be added to your site. If you have students visiting the school on a temporary basis, we would recommend not adding them to your school site if they are visiting for a day (such as an open day), and you would need to take their attendance outside of Arbor.

For students attending for longer than a day, you can add them as Guest students. This will include them in your student numbers for statutory reporting in the school census. You can see how to add Guest students here.