Attendance FAQ

This article addresses common questions about attendance management in Arbor, including locking attendance registers, marking remote learners, identifying persistent absentees, and limitations on attendance codes. It also discusses the integration with third-party sign-in systems for visitors. Check the Attendance FAQs 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 collect 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.

Will switching on best mark recalculate statutory attendance?

No, this setting will only apply to your attendance moving forward. Any roll call statutory attendance marks from before the switch will not be changed.

Can we switch the first mark on for different student groups?

This setting applies to your whole school, it isn't possible to have it on for some students, and off for other year groups or key stages.

How do we switch on the 'first mark' option?

Contact the Arbor Support Team if supported by Arbor, or your Support Partner if not supported by Arbor with confirmation from your data manager and we will change this for you.

We may ask you some questions to double-check that switching this on is right for your school.

Can we report on the student's future attendance?

You may want to see what a child's future attendance will be. For example, if you want to see what a child's absence percentage would be if they attended every day until the end of the term or year.

Arbor will not automatically calculate this for you. You will need to report on attendance, and export this or use calculated fields in the Custom Report Writer to complete further analysis.

You can submit feedback to our roadmap in the section on Attendance in Arbor.

Where can I report on Attendance Notes?

There is no dedicated field for reporting on attendance notes in the Custom Report Writer or in planned registers. However, if you go to Students > Attendance > Admin > Raw Attendance Marks and select to report on Mark Type = Lesson, you will get a table with a column for attendance notes. You can then select the hide other columns from the table, and you can click on the Notes column header to reorder the column so that empty cells without notes go to the bottom of the table.

Why have attendance marks not been removed when we have recorded a school holiday?

If a holiday is recorded in your Arbor site after registers have been opened for a day, any opened registers will remain open and be flagged as incomplete. Any unopened registers will be removed. 

You can go to Students > Attendance > Bulk Edit Marks Standard/Advanced to input a # code for all students if the school was not open.

Can we take registers for students before they start at our school? 

We strongly recommend that you do not take registers for students before they start at your school as this will cause incorrect records for the census and for your school figures as seen on your Homepage. If you need to record students as being at your school before their enrolment officially begins, consider recording them as guest pupils. 

Can we reset registers to be unopened?

When taking attendance, you need to open the registers for attendance marks to pull through to the statutory roll call marks, and in attendance certificates.

If you have opened a register you did not mean to open, it is not possible to set this register as not opened yet again.

You will need to fill in the register with appropriate attendance marks to prevent it from showing up as an incomplete register.

How do I record attendance for a Child Missing Education (CME) or a student who never started?

Schools must enter pupils on the admission register at the beginning of the first day on which the school has agreed, or been notified, that the pupil will attend the school.

If a pupil fails to attend on the agreed or notified date, the school should record the relevant authorised or unauthorised attendance code in registers until confirmation has been received they can be taken off roll. For a list of the attendance codes available to select, please see our breakdown of available codes.

Your school should undertake reasonable enquiries to establish the child’s whereabouts and put a process in place with their local authority of when to inform them of the details of pupils who fail to attend regularly, or have missed ten school days or more without permission.

For more information on Children Missing Education please refer to: Children missing education: statutory guidance for local authorities

Which events contribute towards statutory attendance?

The following table details which events contribute towards statutory attendance: