Applicants and admissions - Adding, enrolling and sending communications

You can use Arbor to track progress of 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logging which students have been offered a place or who have been rejected, logging who has accepted their place or withdrawn, record any admissions appeals and finally enrol your students into their year groups, registration forms, and houses for next year.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

Please note that although it is possible to record application statuses such as Accepted, Rejected or Withdrawn, using these is optional. Your LA will be managing the process for September admissions, so these statuses are only available for you to track the process, rather than administering the offers process yourself.

Step 1 - Set up your intake season

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. 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groups your applicants together and allows you to easily check everyone has been accepted and enrolled, rejected or withdrawn.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. 

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Step 2 - Add your Applicants

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.

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Step 3 - Log applicants as accepted or rejected

Once you have been given 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.

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.

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Step 4 - Send out communications

Once students have been given their places, you can easily generate letters or send SMSs or emails to applicants or their guardians following the instructions in 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:

  • switched the Parent Portal on for guardians of applicants - you can see how to do this here.
  • completed step 3 of the new school year setup process - you can see how to do this here.
Step 5 - Log accepted or withdrawn offers

To mark offers as accepted 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 the offer.

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Applicants that have withdrawn will have this as their status.

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Step 6 - Record any Admissions Appeals

From May, you’ll be able to record any admissions appeals from students that have had their application rejected.

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!

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Step 7 - Enrolling the students ready for September

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), plus Step 5 if you also use Houses, to copy over your year groups and registration forms for next year.

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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. This is part 4 of Step 3.

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

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  • 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. These three steps do not officially enrol them in your school.
  • If you use houses, repeat this and select Assign applicants to house.

These three steps do not officially enrol 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.

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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.

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