Bulk enrol students to add them into lesson registers

There are a few different ways to enrol students in bulk into courses in Arbor, rather than enrolling students one at a time. The most suitable option will depend on your needs as a school - take a look below for more details.

Permissions

• Academic Structure: Administer - Add/edit/remove students in courses and automatic enrolments
• Enrolment: Administer All Students - Manage students' enrolments into the school, and into their year groups, registration forms and houses

If you don't have permission, contact your office staff - they can follow this guide to give you the right permission.

Which option should we choose?

Bulk enrolment spreadsheet: You can bulk enrol students using an imported spreadsheet. If students are already enrolled in a class, using this tool will not end or override any existing enrolments; it will only add them to new classes. You will need to end the existing enrolments first if you wish to move a student between courses.

Teaching groups: If a certain cohort of students will take all the same courses, you can automatically enrol them using Teaching Groups. Using a Teaching Group for these students means you would only have to add students to one teaching group, and they will be automatically enrolled in the courses. These can be used to manage the streaming of sets of students.

Automatic enrolments: Anyone enrolled in the original course will automatically be enrolled in the other course. This method is the most complex to maintain, as you may need to remove the automatic enrolment if you need to make changes. This option also allows you to easily 

Enrolling manually: You can choose exactly which students should be enrolled in which lessons. This can take some time in a large school, as students have to be selected individually.

Bulk Enrolment page: This page allows you to manage enrolment into registers and is especially useful for nursery or post-16 students only attending part-time. This option allows you to enrol the same students into multiple courses at the same time. However, this feature can only manage one year group at a time.

Getting ready

To get started, you'll need:

• Year Groups created
• Students enrolled into their correct Year Groups
• Courses created, to import students into
• Courses linked to the correct Year Groups

If you decide that you no longer wish to use an auto-enrolment, but wish to keep the courses, and enrolled students, please follow this article: How do I remove an auto-enrolment from a teaching group or course?

Option 1: Using our bulk enrolment spreadsheet

1.1 Before using the spreadsheet, check for double enrolments

If students are already enrolled in a class, using the bulk tool will not end or override any existing enrollments. This will just add them to the new classes.

You will need to end the existing enrolments manually by going to School > Programme > Courses, selecting the course, then ending the enrolments for the students using the Bulk Action in the Enrolled Students section to withdraw students. You can also see how to do this in bulk in the Deleting an enrolment section of this guide.

1.2 Downloading your spreadsheet

To download a Course Enrolment Import spreadsheet:

• Go to School > Programmes > Courses
• Click the green Course Enrolment Imports button.

This will take you to the Course Enrolment Imports page, from here: 

• Click +Add. 

• Select the academic year you wish to bulk-enrol students into by selecting Download Import File for [academic year]

• Select the Subject(s) you wish to enrol students into using the dropdown
• Select the Year Groups of students you wish to bulk enrol into these subjects; on the downloaded spreadsheet, each year group will be displayed as a new tab.

• Click the green button to download the spreadsheet. Or, click the grey button to customise the import spreadsheet, then press the Download Import Spreadsheet button after making your custom choices. 
  
  Custom choices you can select are:
   
  • Which specific students to include (leave blank to include the whole year's cohort)
  • Which subjects to include (leave blank to include all)
  • Which courses to include (leave blank to include all)

The file will download to your computer so you can open it in Excel, Sheets or any other spreadsheet editor.

1.3 Filling in the spreadsheet

Once the spreadsheet has been downloaded, please open the spreadsheet and read the front page instructions. These instructions are:

The "Enrolments" sheet contains:

– A row for every student selected when generating this template    
– Extra columns to help identify each student (UPN, Registration Form details)    
– A column for every course selected when generating this template

For each student row, place a mark in the column(s) you want to create a course enrolment for.
Any mark will work, for example 'Y', '/' or 'T'

Please note: You may not add, delete or change the order of students or courses. If you do this, the import spreadsheet will no longer work.

Important note: Do not try to edit the format of the spreadsheet/move columns or reposition student names as this will invalidate the file and it will not successfully upload into Arbor.

Navigate to a year group tab on your spreadsheet and mark the students into classes by marking the cell with any symbol you wish.

• At the bottom of the spreadsheet, the total number of students for each class is calculated.
• On the right-hand side of each student, a running total of how many classes the student has been enrolled on is shown.
• You can also filter the spreadsheet.

Once the spreadsheet is uploaded back into Arbor, the students will be enrolled on the classes in which they were marked.

Make sure to save your file once you have completed your edits so that these changes are included when you upload the file.

1.4 Uploading your spreadsheet

Once you have completed your spreadsheet and saved it, you need to upload it back into Arbor via the same pathway taken to download it. Use these steps:

• Go to School > Programmes > Courses
• Click on the Course Enrolment Imports button
• Click on the +Add button.
• This time select Upload Import file

• Click Browse and select your file
• Click Next step.

• Confirm the academic year in which the students are being enrolled in classes.
• Give the import a name - as you can upload multiple spreadsheets it is advised that you give the file a name that identifies the file content.
• Enter the start and end date for the course enrolments
• Click the green Enrol Students button.

Option 2: Using teaching groups

When you have more than one course or class with the same set or group of students, you can enrol them into all their classes together using Teaching Groups.

Using a Teaching Group for these students means you only have to manually add students to one teaching group, and the students will be automatically enrolled in the courses.

Top Tip: The process shown below can be used mid-year. If you need to prepare for next year, you can copy over teaching groups as part of Step 6 of the New School Year Setup process.

2.1 Creating a teaching group

To create a teaching group:

• Go to Students > Enrolment > Academic > Teaching Groups > Overview.
• Click +Add.

• Set a Group Name - make this a recognisable and unique name, so you can distinguish it from othe groups
• Add a description (optional)
• Click Create Teaching Group.

You are now automatically taken to the Teaching Group Overview page.

2.2 Adding Students to the Teaching Group

To access the Teaching Group Overview for a group created previously: 

• Go to Students > Enrolment > Academic > Teaching Groups > Overview
• Click the teaching group you wish to view.

From the Teaching Group Overview, take these steps to add students:

• Go to the Current and Future Members section
• Click +Add.

To add students from scratch:

• On the pop-up, select Add students

• On the slide over, select the student(s) to include. You can add individual students or whole groups and you can make multiple selections
• Set the date range in the From and Until fields - these are the dates between which the students are enrolled in the group
• Click on Add Members.

To copy students from teaching groups in the previous academic year:

• On the pop-up, select Copy Students

• Select the correct teaching group and dates
• Click  Copy Students.

2.3 Adding an automatic enrolment for the courses

Link a teaching group to courses to add the group members to those courses automatically with these steps:

• Go to the teaching group overview via Students > Enrolment > Academic > Teaching Groups > Overview , then click the teaching group in the list
• On the next page, go to the Automatic Enrolments into Courses section and click +Add

• On the slide over, use the ...will automatically be enrolled into Courses dropdown to select the courses that you wish to add the students in this teaching group to
• Click on Add Automatic Enrolments.

The students in this teaching group will then be automatically enrolled in the listed courses, their enrolment dates will match their enrolment in the teaching group.

Click on a course and then Course/Class on the slide over to see more details.

Then click More Information to reach the Course Overview.

From the Course Overview, you will be able to see the students enrolled in the course from the teaching group's automatic enrolment.

Selecting to view Groups will show the teaching group that has been enrolled.

Option 3: Using automatic enrolments

Automatic enrolments can be created to allow groups of students who will take several subjects together to be enrolled in one place which will then feed into a class. You can set them up for teaching groups (shown above), custom groups, registration forms and houses. See below for some tips on when you should and should not use this function.

Top Tip: You can also use automatic enrolments to enrol students in a course into Programmes of Study.

Adding an auto-enrolment

To add an auto-enrolment, head to the overview page of the group you want to automatically enrol in a course

For example, from the Students > Enrolments > Pastoral > Registration Forms page, select the registration form to get to the overview page.

To add an auto-enrolment:

• Click the +Add button in the Automatic Enrolments into Courses section of the groups overview page

• Select the courses you wish to be fed into by the group

• Click Add Automatic Enrolments.

When can auto-enrolments be used?

What can I use auto-enrolments for?

• A registration form (which is automatically auto-enrolled into the registration course page - do NOT remove this unless you take registers in another period), which also takes General Studies.
• A House where all take assembly together - enrol students in the house, and auto-enrol in the assembly.

When should Auto Enrolments not be used?

• You have a subject that has students who may move in and out of different classes within the year. You could use Teaching Groups with Interventions; however, it is recommended that you keep this kind of subject separate from any auto-enrolments.
• You wish to change to sets or options, or make any changes to a course or class enrolment within the academic year. In this instance, we recommend you enrol students onto the individual courses.

Option 4: Enrolling into lessons manually

To enrol certain students into lessons manually, follow these steps:

• Go to School > Programmes > Courses > Table View.
• Click on the course
• Click the Enrol Students on the slide-over

• Select the Students to enrol in the course
• Select whether to notify the teachers of the new joiners.
• Click Enrol Students

Please note: the dropdown will show students with their current enrolment next to their name, rather than the registration form they will be in next year. So, for a year 5 class, you will need to add current year 4 students if you're enrolling them in courses for next year.

Top Tip: Select all students in a certain year by typing in the number, then clicking Ctrl+A (Windows) or Cmd+A (Mac) to select all the students.

Option 5: Using our bulk enrolment page

The Students > Enrolment > Academic > Courses > Bulk Enrolment page is particularly useful when students attend part-time (such as nursery or post-16 students), and they shouldn't be enrolled in all registers.

Please note, to be able to do this, you will have needed to set up each lesson as a module within the course.  Check whether you've done this in School > Programmes > Courses. You can see how to set this up here.

Using the filters

By default, the page shows the lowest year group at your school, but you can click into the filters at the top of the page to change this.

• Use the Students who are... filter to narrow down the students to a particular year group. This ensures the table loads if you have loads of students.
• Use the Course year groups filter to narrow down the registers you can display in the table. If you select a year group here, we'll only show the registers linked to that year group, or that aren't linked to any year group (for when you have mixed year groups).

If you select to only show certain courses, these will be the only ones that display in the table.

Enrolling students

Now you have the right students and courses in your table, follow these steps to enrol students:

• Tick the boxes next to all the students who need to be enrolled in the same courses with the same dates
• Click the Bulk action button
• Select Bulk enrol students.

• On the slide over, choose the dates they should be enrolled into these registers for
• Select the registers to add the students to in the Enrol in course field
• Choose whether to notify the teachers of the new joiners with the checkbox
• Click Enrol students.

The enrolments are now processed in the background. This can take some time for the enrolments to completely pull through onto this page, so you may need to refresh your page to get them to show.

Deleting an enrolment

If you've added an enrolment incorrectly, you can remove it (as long as you've not already started taking attendance for this register). To do this:

• Tick the boxes next to all the students whom you've added incorrectly
• Click the Bulk action button
• Select Bulk delete student enrolments.

• In the slide over, choose which registers to remove the enrolment from using the Course Enrolments tickboxes.
• Click the red Delete Enrolments button

Changing enrolments into registers

If a student is changing the sessions they are attending, you can end their current enrolments and add new ones. To do this:

• Tick the boxes next to all the students for whom you want to change enrolments
• Click the Bulk action button
• Select Bulk end student enrolments

• In the slide over, set the last date the students should appear in the registers using the End date field (the day after this date will be the first day they no longer appear in registers)
• Choose which registers to end the enrolment for using the Course enrolments check boxes
• Click End Enrolments

The students will then no longer be enrolled in those registers from the End date you select. You can check whether the students' enrolment has changed by using the date selector in the filters.