You can use Arbor to manage your admissions process. This includes adding applicants to your system, tracking numbers, logging which students have been offered a place or who have been rejected, logging who has accepted their place or withdrawn, record any admissions appeals and finally enrol your students into their year groups, registration forms, and houses for next year.
This article will talk you through each step, and when this should be done. Just click the + to expand each step!
You can send Mail Merges to guardians of applicants or applicants directly!
Take a look at this article for how to do this: Sending SMS, emails, letters or in-app messages to applicants or their guardians
Applicants starting in September
Before you can add applicants, you'll need to do two things:
- Add the next academic year to your site, to allow students to be enrolled starting in September
- Create an intake season to add your applicants into.To enable you to add new applicants for the next year you need to first create an intake season. You need to set up a new intake season for each new cohort of students that apply to your school - this groups your applicants together and allows you to easily check everyone has been accepted and enrolled, rejected or withdrawn.
Take a look at this article to see how to add the next year and intake season.
Once guardians apply for a place at your school, you'll be able to use one of our three easy methods (shown in this article) to add these students as Applicants to your site. You should only complete one process for each student.
- Uploading an ATF
- Manually adding Applicants (you'll also need to use this process to add applications for students moving to the next phase, such as year 11s applying for your Post-16)
- Using our Applicant Spreadsheet
Registration Forms and Year Groups in the Applicant Spreadsheet
Please note that you will not be able to put an expected year group and registration form for each applicant into the Applicant Spreadsheet. This is because the year groups and registration forms have not yet been set up as part of the new school year setup process. This part of Arbor will become available on May 1st, along with the supporting guidance.
Once you have the finalised lists of students that have been accepted into your school for September, you can log that they have been accepted or rejected in Arbor before offers day.
Just go to Students > All Students > Applicants, select the intake season, then go to Applicants on the left-hand side. From here you can simply select the students to update, then click the Bulk action button to either Make Offers or Reject applications.
Please note that only students that have not been enrolled yet can be rejected.
On offers day, your school will be releasing offers to students and their guardians! You might want to send guardians an email offering their child a place at your school.
You can easily generate letters or send SMSs or emails to applicants or their guardians following the instructions in this article: For full information on how to send communications, see this article: Sending communications to applicants or their guardians
Please note: To send in-app messages to guardians through the Parent Portal/Arbor App, you will have needed to either:
Once you’ve sent out official offers, the acceptance messages will start pouring in!
To accept offers in Arbor from the same Applicants page, select the students to update, then click the Bulk action button to Accept Offers or Withdraw students who have not accepted your offer.
Applicants that have withdrawn will have this as their status.
From May, you’ll be able to record any admissions appeals from students you have rejected applications for.
From the Applicants page, just click on the student’s name, click the More information button, then click the Lodge Appeal button to get started. Take a look at this article for full instructions.
The numbers of Admissions Appeals are collected in the Spring Census, so if you log them now you won’t need to manually add in these numbers to your Census next Spring!
You won’t be able to add your new students to year groups, registration forms or houses and officially enrol them until you’ve begun the New School Year Setup process. This part of Arbor opens on May 1st.
You'll need to complete parts 1, 2 and 3 of Step 3 (shown in the screenshot below) to copy over your year groups and registration forms for next year.
You'll then be able to give your applicants a year group and reg form, and then enrol them in bulk from Students > All Students > Applicants.
If you haven't already done so, tick all the students you want to enrol and click the Bulk action button to select Make offers.
Then repeat this and select Accept offers.
Tick all the students you want to add to the same year group and click the Bulk action button to select Assign applicants to year group.
Then repeat this and select Assign applicants to registration form. Neither of these two steps officially enrols them in your school.
The final step is to add the future enrolment for the students starting in September. Tick all the students you want to enrol and click the Bulk action button to select Enrol students.
You'll then need to enrol them into any additional classes, or if they are nursery students set up regular or irregular attendance patterns so they appear on the right registers.
What's next?
You won’t be able to add your new students to year groups, registration forms or houses and officially enrol them until you’ve begun the New School Year Setup process. This part of Arbor opens on May 1st.
In the meantime, start planning how you’ll be collecting data for your applicants. You can check out our articles on data collection sheets and collecting data from guardians using the Parent Portal/Arbor App.
Applicants starting mid-way through the year
If you have applicants starting mid-way through the year, for example, if you have a new cohort of Nursery students starting in January, just follow steps 1-6 shown in the above section (where applicable).
Then in the Applicants section, select the students to enrol, then click the Bulk action button. First select which year group they will be in, then select which registration form they will be in, then click Enrol students.
The students are then enrolled in your school. You'll then need to enrol them into their actual classes, or if they are nursery students set up regular or irregular attendance patterns so they appear on the right registers.
Comments
Is there a downloadable version of this?
Hi Clare, if you expand all the sections, then right-click you should be able to print the page to a PDF or printout!
Last year there was a printable Guidance Booklet for the new intake, with a tick list to work through?
Hi Clare, there sure is, you can find this guidance here: https://support.arbor-education.com/hc/en-us/sections/360000111953-New-School-Year-Setup
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