This article provides guidance on common Nursery setup questions and the steps that you need to take to resolve possible issues. The guide starts with a handy glossary to help you get to grips with nursery-related terms in Arbor before delving deeper into frequently asked questions. top tips and links to further reading.
Glossary
- Course: In Arbor, classes are known as courses. A course is where you will enrol students and create the lessons (registers).
- Module: When referring to Nursery courses, we often use the term ‘modules’ to mean all of the sub-level courses that sit under your main Nursery course, for example, Monday AM, Monday PM or Wednesday PM.
- Attendance Pattern: Attendance Patterns are a way of enrolling students into different sessions (for example, whether they attend Morning only, Afternoon Only, or all-day sessions) and telling the system to remember this pattern for that student. Attendance Patterns are great when you have students who attend either Morning only, Afternoon Only or All Day every day. You can set these up following these instructions.
- Automatic Enrolments: Automatic enrolments are a great way to enrol students into certain courses without manual intervention required. For example, enrolments into the Nursery Class on a 'morning only' attendance pattern would lead to that student being automatically enrolled into all AM modules.
- Year Groups: A year group is a way of grouping students by their age and/or national curriculum year.
- Registration Forms: Registration Forms are a pastoral way to define specific groups of students.
- Timetable Slots: We often refer to timetable slots - these are derived from the "classes & lessons" that you set up within each course.
Frequently asked questions
How do I change the nursery sessions a student attends?
If you need to change which registers a student should appear in, the action you'll need to take will depend on whether you use enrolments or Attendance Patterns to manage your nursery.
- Enrolments - follow the instructions here to add an end date for their enrolment into their current registers, then add a new enrolment into their new registers: Changing enrolments into registers
- Attendance patterns - see how to change a student's Attendance Pattern here: How to change a student's attendance pattern so they appear in the right registers
How can I reduce the number of registers teachers have to take for a Nursery class?
Often, multiple registers will show when duplicate Classes or Modules have been added for Nursery.
If you have set up your modules and attendance patterns correctly, you will have all 3 types of students: These could be different Classes or Modules.
- AM students
- All Day Students
- PM Students
When the course structure follows our recommended guidance, you will have:
- A daily AM course containing Morning Only students and All Day students
- A daily PM course containing Afternoon Only students and All Day students
If you have duplicate registers, this can be resolved by restructuring your Nursery courses- you can see how to fix this here: Switching from separate AM, PM All Day registers to one register for AM and PM
Why do I need to create daily AM and PM modules for Nursery courses?
Nursery students often attend part-time sessions at school or change their attendance patterns within the same academic year, so the course needs to be set up flexibly to allow for this.
Adding an AM and PM lesson for each weekday means that staff can add or remove students from a lesson, as needed, and students won’t show in a register when they’re not scheduled to be in a class.
Using this method means that you won’t have to mark part-time students with an X code, so you will have accurate attendance statistics to report on, and your census data will be correct.
Note: Some schools only operate a part-time Nursery class (running in the morning or afternoon only), which means that the other sessions are not needed.
For example, if your school runs a morning-only nursery, you would only need to create AM sessions for the days that your nursery is open.
Can I have multiple Nursery AM/PM Lessons for the same day?
Yes, you can have multiple AM/PM lessons for your Nursery students on the same day.
In order to create these, you will need to create separate courses for the Nursery lessons and make new timetable slots for these sessions.
The students who are added to the new courses should not collide with any lessons already scheduled
How do I amend the staff members linked to Nursery registers?
If the attending staff members for the nursery lessons need to be amended, please see the steps below:
1. Go to School > Programmes > Courses > Select the Nursery course and module.
2. Scroll down to the Classes & Lessons section
3. Click the relevant timetable slot to amend, for example, Monday 9:00 - 12:00
4a. To remove the staff member: Click the staff member, then click Remove to remove them completely, or adjust the end date and click Save Changes to remove them from a specific date onwards
4b. To add a new staff member, select Add on the Staff panel and enter the staff details.
How do I manage Nursery classes for both N1 and N2 as a Mixed Year Group?
We recommend setting up a course for N1 and N2 students separately, so that a year group can be linked to each course. This will mean that your data for the census is easier to submit, and your reporting statistics will be clearer to understand.
However, where the Nursery class has already been set up as a mixed year group, you will need to leave the Class this way.
Why can't I change a student's enrolment?
When you scroll down to the Enrolled Students section of a course, if a student has a chain icon next to their name, this means that their enrolment can't be changed because of an automatic enrolment.
If you attempt to edit their enrolment, you will see a blue banner that says:
Editing not possible
This enrolment cannot be edited directly because it exists due to an automatic enrolment from another group [COURSE NAME]. Changes should be made to the group that triggers the automatic enrolment.
The only way to change an automatic enrolment is to remove the automatic enrolment from its original course completely, for all students.
How do I remove an automatic enrolment?
If you wish to move away from using Automatic Enrolments and move to Manual enrolment, the existing automatic enrolment for the students needs to be deleted. When you do so, please confirm that the pupils need to be kept within the course.
To delete the Automatic Enrolment and keep the students in the course, please see the steps below:
1. Go to Students > Enrolment > Pastoral > Registration Forms
2. Select your Nursery registration form
3. Click the Automatic Enrolment in the Automatic Enrolments into Courses section
3. Click Edit on the slide-over window
4. Select to Keep students in the course so they are not removed from the Nursery class (tip: the reason we recommend using the 'keep' option is to avoid any attendance data being lost for past registers).
5. Click Delete
You can now follow these instructions to enrol students in the right registers in bulk manually: Enrol nursery into registers manually
To resolve this, please follow Switching from using Attendance Patterns to manual enrolment`
Removing automatic enrolments - What if we have already started taking attendance?
Because you choose to 'Keep' the students enrolled in the class, any attendance will not be removed.
If you choose to end or remove a student's enrolment in a register where attendance has been taken, this will make these attendance marks redundant - you can see how to fix these here: Remove redundant attendance marks
Can I delete attendance patterns in bulk?
Unfortunately, there is no way to delete attendance patterns in bulk.
If you've removed the need for Attendance Patterns to add students to registers, the removal of them is optional, and you don't have to do it. If you wish to delete those, just follow these steps:
1. Go to Students > Enrolment > Year Groups > Select class > Attendance Patterns.
2. Click on each student's Attendance Pattern
3. Click Delete
How do I keep a Student in Nursery after promoting them on Step 3 New School Year set up?
Initially, on step 3 of the New School Year Setup, the Students would be promoted as follows N1 to N2 and N2 to Reception. Where the Students are not moving on from N1 or N2 this can be reviewed and tweaked on Step 5 Review and tweak Registration Forms or Step 7 Review and tweak Year Groups.
You can see more information on how to do this here
How do I switch from using Attendance Patterns to manual enrolment?
If you wish to manually enrol students into the sessions they attend, rather than use Attendance Patterns, for example, if some students attend irregular sessions. You will need to remove the automatic enrolments using this guidance.
Once completed, the student can then be unenrolled from the relevant session through the Nursery class or in Bulk if you have more than one student.
Can I update Nursery-funded hours in bulk?
Yes, you can update funded hours and hours at setting for Nursery students in bulk by following these steps:
- Go to Students > All Students > Bulk Update > Bulk Update Funded Hours.
- Tick the boxes next to the students, and use the Bulk action button to select Bulk Updated Funded Hours & Hours At Setting.
3. In the slide over, you can add the funded hours, hours at setting, extended hours and expanded hours, then click Bulk update.
Comments
Article is closed for comments.