Weekly Bulletin: Attendance & Behaviour (Smart Report)

The Weekly Bulletin: Attendance & Behaviour is an AI-powered report in Arbor's Core package that provides a weekly overview of school attendance and behaviour trends, comparing the last full school week to the previous one. It highlights successes, areas to watch, and key pupil group comparisons. Reports can be customised, edited, and shared via download, email, or in-app notification.

Before you get started

Permissions

• To create the report, you will need the School: General Admin: Export Data permission. 
• To view a report made by another staff member, you’ll need to have the School: Arbor AI: View Arbor AI permission.
• You will also need permission to view all data areas included in the report. If you don't have access to the data in one of the areas of the report, then the report will not be visible to you, regardless of who generated it.
• If you download this report as a PDF file, anyone with the file can view the report - regardless of their permissions. Please exercise caution when sharing PDF versions of the bulletin to make sure you're not sharing any data that the person shouldn't be able to see

If you don't have the relevant permissions, ask your admin team to give you permission using these instructions.

AI usage

Because the Weekly Bulletin: Attendance & Behaviour is powered by AI, generating it will use up a small amount of your Monthly Free Allowance. You can see what % of the allowance is used up by going to School > Arbor AI > AI Activity Log. It's typically only around 0.1%

• Read more about your AI usage and monthly free allowance here: Understanding your AI Monthly Free Allowance & Subscriptions

Is this part of my existing Arbor package?

Yes! The Weekly Bulletin: Attendance & Behaviour is included in our Core package and therefore available on all school sites. No additional package is required. The use of this feature is included in your Monthly Free Allowance, so as long as you have sufficient allowance left, you can use this feature. 

What is the Weekly Bulletin: Attendance & Behaviour report?

The Weekly Bulletin: Attendance & Behaviour is an AI-powered Smart Report that gives you a short, instant overview of how your school has performed on attendance and behaviour over the past school week. It highlights what is going well, flags what to watch, compares this week to last week, and shows how key pupil groups compare to overall averages.

Who is this report for?

The Weekly Bulletin is designed for headteachers and senior leaders who want a fast, weekly read on how the school is performing on attendance and behaviour without having to pull data manually or run a full report. It's particularly useful for SLT who hold regular weekly briefings, need a quick brief before a governor update, or want to spot emerging trends before they become problems.

Attendance officers will also find it useful as a weekly sense-check. The report surfaces week-on-week changes automatically, so it can replace or complement a manually-built weekly attendance summary.

What does the report show?

• One key positive statistic for each area
• Areas to watch - any challenges that need attention
• A summary of other key insights
• A list of suggested prompts to investigate further with Ask Arbor
• Tables showing your full attendance and behaviour data for the week, broken down by year groups and your chosen key demographic groups

What time period does it cover?

The report always covers the last full school week, compared to the school week immediately before it. So if you run the report on Monday, 22nd June, it will tell you about the previous full school week (15th-19th) compared to the week that preceded it (8th-12th).

How does the AI work?

The Weekly Bulletin pulls in data using the same fixed calculators we use in all our pre-built dashboards (such as those on your Homepage) and reports in Arbor. That means AI is not used to decide which data to pull into the report; it’s only used to analyse the data. It does this in two steps:

• First, it compares the data from this calendar week to the previous calendar week and highlights any outliers or positive and negative trends.
• Then, it uses that data to fill in pre-built placeholders in our template, using the findings from the first step.

This approach makes sure that the data in the report is accurate and the analysis is structured clearly and consistently, every time you generate the report. 

Creating a Weekly Bulletin

To run a new Weekly Bulletin from scratch, follow the standard procedure for creating a Smart Report: 

• Go to Reporting > Report Library and search for "Weekly Bulletin". 
  
  
   
• Click the Weekly Bulletin: Attendance & Behaviour tile
• On the pop-up, customise your report with the following settings in the Template Details section:
   
  • Include AI analysis - untick this to exclude any AI analysis from the report - you will still see your weekly data if you untick this.
  • Generate the report in the background - Tick this if you want to generate the report in the background and get a notification when it's done, or if you want to watch the bulletin being generated.
  • Exclude selected sections - Select any sections you would like to exclude from the generated report. By default, all sections are included. You can exclude Attendance, Behaviour Incidents and Detentions broken down by Key Groups or Year Groups from the report.
    
    
     
• Next, specify which students to include in the Key Groups section. Use this to identify key groups of students to highlight in the report. These groups will be used to calculate separate statistics for attendance and behaviour. You can select standard demographic groups - like SEN students, students of a specific age or sex - or you can select a Custom Group set up by your school. 
  
  For example, if you set SEN students as a Key Group, you are more likely to see this group highlighted in the AI analysis. And, tables that break down attendace or behaviour data by Key Group will show statistics for students who are SEN and those who are not.

• Lastly, use the optional Additional AI Instructions section to provide instructions to steer the AI insights for this week. For example: "Focus particularly on Year 7" or "Highlight any groups that have reached 95% attendance". These take priority over the standard guidance. Just type your instructions into the text box.
• Once you're happy, click the green Create Report button.
  
   

Managing Weekly Bulletin: Attendance & Behaviour reports

Like all Smart Reports, the Weekly Bulletin can be customised and shared. For details on sharing and customising Smart Reports more generally, please refer to our Arbor AI: Introducing Smart Reports guide.

How do I view existing reports?

• Go to Reporting > Smart Reports > Manage Reports 
• Find the report that has already been generated in the table
• Click on the report
• Click Open Report on the slide-over

Can I edit the report?

Yes. The AI-generated commentary in the report can be edited after it has been generated. You can adjust wording before sharing, add additional sections or change tables to graphs.

• To make changes to the text, simply click one of the text elements to start editing. Your changes are automatically saved as you go. 
   
• To add pages, click More in the top-right corner of a page and select Add page before or Add page after
  
  
   

• Click the green button just above a table (to the right) to switch the table to a (stacked) bar chart, or vice versa.

   

  

   

• Click Add text on a blank page to add additional text boxes
  
  

Can I share the report?

Yes. Once generated, you can share the report with the buttons at the top of the report in three ways:

• Download it as a file (Download button)
• Email it directly from Arbor (Share button)
• Send it as an in-app notification (Share button)

Reports you share are sent to the users you select via email or notification as a link to a downloadable PDF file. When clicked, it will download the PDF to their device.