Staggered Start Dates for students starting later

This article provides guidance on managing staggered start dates for students in Arbor, detailing three options for enrollment and attendance management. It explains how to adjust student profiles, use planned absences, and modify timetable slots to accommodate students starting later in the term.

You may have some students who start on a later date than others in September. We'll show you how to manage this in Arbor in this article.

Permissions

• School: Academic Structure: Administer - Edit the timetable
• Student Profile: Enrolment: Administer All Students - Manage student enrolments
• Student Profile: Attendance: Administer All Students -  Edit attendance marks for students

If you don't have permission, you'll need to ask your admin team to give you permission using these instructions.

If you have students who don't start attending school for the first few weeks, you have 3 options for managing this: 

• Option 1 - Students are not considered enrolled until they start attending classes. On your Arbor site, they won't appear as current students until the start of their enrolment, and won't be included in your enrolment figures or appear in registers until this date.
• Option 2  - Students will be enrolled from the start of the Autumn term, but are not required to attend. The students will appear in registers but their attendance will automatically be entered into the registers when they are opened. 
• Option 3 - Students will be enrolled from the start of the Autumn term but registers won't be created for them until they actually attend your school.

Option 1 - Change their overall enrolment start date

To do this you'll need to head to each student's profile. Just search for their name in the search bar on the top right of Arbor. 

Click into the Enrolment section, and click into the student's enrolment. If they're a new student you'll want to click into the Future Enrolment and if they're a current student you'll need to click into Current Enrolment on this page.

When you click on this a slide-over will open on the right-hand side of the page. Click the orange Edit button on the top right to change the start date. 

Now change the entry date to the date that the student will actually start attending your school and click Save Changes. 

Option 2 - Use a planned absence

For this option, you'll want to follow our adding and viewing Planned Absences article. This details how to add a planned absence with a pre-fill mark - this is usually the X code when students are not required to attend yet.

You'll need to add one that covers the whole timeframe from when the school opens in September to when the student is due to begin attending your school.

You'll need to make sure you open the registers each day so these marks pull through.

Option 3 - Change the start date of the registers for the student group. 

For this option, you'll need to head to School > Timetable > Timetable Administration > Timetable Slots. Make sure the filter at the top shows the right academic year and group.

If it doesn't, click into the filter and change the Academic Year and choose the Courses & Classes that you need to change the start date for. In the below example I've chosen the Reception course.

On the left of the page tick all of the slots that you need to change the start date for and use the Bulk action button to Edit Effective Dates. 

In the slide-over that appears enter the new start date and enter the end date again.

Remember to scroll down the slide over to confirm the change and click Save Changes.