Shared Teaching lets you share students and courses across multiple schools with ease. Teachers can record attendance and assessment marks for every student and it will instantly sync between home and partner schools. Staff can also view important information about each student at a glance, such as emergency contact details or dietary preferences.
Shared Teaching can be used by any school, but it's been specifically built for schools with KS4 or KS5 students where teaching for certain lessons is offered at another partner school, such as another school in the same trust.
As this is a brand new feature, we want to make sure it's as useful as it can be to our schools. If you have any feedback, please submit it here: Shared Teaching
Permissions
- School: Shared Teaching: Setup - Set up shared teaching courses. This permission isn't assigned to any business role by default, so must be manually given to users. You can only assign this business role if your school is the home school.
- Academic Structure: Administer - Add/edit/remove students and staff assigned to courses
- Enrolment: Administer All Students - Manage students' enrolments into the school, and into their year groups, registration forms and houses
If you don't have the permission, you'll need to ask your admin team to give you permission using these instructions.
How do we get this feature or get support?
Shared Teaching either needs to be purchased alongside Advanced Support, or you need to be supported by one of our Support Partners.
If you'd like to purchase Shared Teaching, or for more information, please contact your Account Manager at accountmanagers@arbor-education.com
To get support:
- If you are supported by one of our Support Partners, please contact them.
- If you are supported via Advanced Support, you can contact us via email, or click Contact us in the top left of the Help Centre.
Before setting up Shared Teaching
- Speak to all of the schools that will be sharing teaching with your school, and decide which school will be the home school. Decide on a staff member who will manage the setup - they either need to be able to log into schools from the MAT MIS, or have a profile set up on each school site.
- Make sure any students who will be attending Shared Teaching courses have been added to the home school site. When they are enrolled in a Shared Teaching course on the home school site, they'll automatically also be added as Guest students on the teaching school sites.
- Make sure that all your schools teach on the same days. If one school teaches on a Saturday for example this can affect your setup - please contact us for further guidance.
- We recommend you make sure that the Academic Calendar on each school's site is the same, with the same year dates, term dates and holidays - you can see how to edit the academic calendar here. Students only see lessons on the school site when it isn't a holiday day, so if there's a miss-match they may not see that they have a lesson scheduled.
- Contact your support provider with details of which schools will be sharing teaching, and which is the home school. You will then be emailed again once you can set up Shared Teaching on the home school site.
How to set up Shared Teaching
In the guidance below, we refer to your schools as the 'home school' and 'teaching school':
- Home school - the school students are registered at, for example the centre for their examinations. Setting up shared teaching courses is done on this school's Arbor site.
- Teaching school - the school or schools that are sharing the teaching
Setting up a Shared Teaching course
On the home school site, go to System > Shared Teaching Admin. Make sure you select the right year in the drop-down menu.
Here you can see any courses already set up, or click +Add to set up a new course.
Add a course name, subject (if required) and curriculum grade (if it isn't a mixed-year-group course). Tick the boxes next to the schools that will be teaching this course, then click Add course.
You'll then be taken to the course overview page.
Click +Add in the Classes & Lessons section to schedule when the classes will take place. Select which school these lessons will be taught at.
In the slide over, select when the lessons at the school you've selected will take place. You can specify a start and end date, or set this automatically based on the school's calendar.
You'll then have a list of the different lessons, and the schools they are taught at.
Once you've added all the lessons, click Push to participating institutions.
You'll then receive a notification.
You'll then be able to see the new course set up on the participating institutions' MIS sites in School > Programmes > Courses.
You'll need to repeat the actions below for each Shared Teaching course, on each school site it has been set up on:
- To give staff access to the attendance registers, you need to add them to the timetable slots.
- If you also want teaching staff to be able to mark assessments and take other actions such as setting assignments, you will also need to add them as the Academic Lead.
To add staff to the timetable slots, go to School > Programmes > Courses and select the course. Click the timetable slot taking place at this school. Click +Add in the staff section.
You can also use the bulk actions in the Shared Teaching tab on the TimeTable Slots page.
To add staff also as Academic Leads, click +Add in the Academic Leads section.
You'll need to enrol students into their Shared Teaching classes on the home school site.
You can do this by clicking +Add on the course page, or by using the same pages you would use to enrol students in classes - we recommend the Bulk enrolment page as the easiest method. You can see how to do this here: Bulk enrol students into lesson registers
Editing or deleting the setup
If you need to change the room a class is in, you can use the bulk actions in the Shared Teaching tab on the TimeTable Slots page.
You can also click on the timetable slot from School > Programmes > Courses and click Edit.
You can only do this on the school site the timetable slot is set to take place at.
If you want to make changes to the timetabled dates, do this on the home school site, in the Shared Teaching area. Once you've made the changes, click the green button to push the changes to the teaching schools.
If you want to delete a Shared Teaching course, make sure you do this before it has been pushed to the teaching schools. On the home school site, go to System > Shared Teaching Admin and select the course. Click the course name and click Delete.
If the course has been pushed to the teaching schools, you won't be able to delete it.
If you just want to delete a timetable slot, click into the slot and click Delete.
If the course has been pushed to the teaching schools, you won't be able to delete it.
You can't delete it from the class overview, even if no attendance has been taken.
Using Shared Teaching
Managing the classes and attendance
Student details and attendance is synced between the home school and teaching schools instantly.
On the Guest student profile on the teaching school sites, you can see basic important information about the student (e.g emergency contact details, dietary preferences). Depending on the nature of the data, some fields will be editable and some view only (e.g. teaching schools cannot edit the emergency contact details, only the home school can).
For Shared Teaching students, the school the mark was recorded at shows on Emergency Evacuation Registers, and Shared Teaching students count as a physical absent mark in the overall head count.
Assessment
Assessment is synced between the home school and teaching schools instantly.
Academic Leads for a course on both sites will be able to add assessment marks, so we recommend you put in a process to agree that only one Academic Lead adds marks to the marksheets.
Reporting
On each school site, you can use all the same in-built reporting for your Shared Teaching students as students who only attend one site, because Guest students aren't excluded.
If you did wish to only report on students who are or are not Shared Teaching students, you can use the Custom Report Writer.
To only show students who are or are not Shared Teaching students (for example attendance %):
- Add the Is imported Shared Teaching student filter if you're on the teaching school site
- Add the Is exported Shared Teaching student filter if you're on the home school site
If students can be home registered on either site, adding both filters set to No will allow you to see students in your report that are not Shared Teaching students.
To only see students in your report that are Shared Teaching students, you'll need to set up two custom groups with Automatic Criteria.
You can then add the Custom Groups filter to select these two groups to include or exclude.
Because the students set up as Shared Teaching students are set up on multiple sites, their attendance and other data will be double-weighted in KPIs.
You can use the Custom Report Writer to report without this double weighting, or to make reports that exclude Shared Teaching students entirely. Please note that it is not possible to make reports that only look at Shared Teaching students on the MAT MIS.
- To remove the double-weighting add a filter for Is imported Shared Teaching student and set it to No.
- To only show students who are or are not Shared Teaching students (for example attendance %), add both the Is imported Shared Teaching student and Is exported Shared Teaching student filters and set them to No.
FAQ
Do we need to add students to all school sites?
No, you only need to make sure they have been added to the home school site. Once you enrol these students in a Shared Teaching course on the home school site, they'll automatically also be added as Guest students on the teaching school sites.
Which site should students and guardians log into?
If you use the Parent Portal and Arbor App or Student Portal at your schools, users should log into the home school site. This is because if there is a mismatch in the academic calendar, events may not show on the teaching school sites and timetables.
Can we add an Abbreviation for Shared Teaching courses?
This is not currently possible.
Can we change the Subject or Year Group?
We recommend adding this information in the Shared Teaching area before pushing the Shared Teaching Course to your teaching schools. If you do need to change this, you can't edit this from the class overview, but you can use the bulk actions on the Students > Enrolment > Classes > Table View page.
How do we set up Shared Teaching when moving to Arbor?
If you are currently moving to Arbor, you may wish to complete the End of Year Process in SIMs before we migrate your data, rather than having to learn a new system right away. If you do, once your data is migrated into Arbor, you'll need to delete the courses that will be run as Shared Teaching courses, then add them manually using the setup instructions above.
Can I copy over Shared Teaching in the New School Year Setup?
If you use Edval or TimeTabler:
- Build your timetable as normal.
- Create your Shared Teaching courses (without timetable slots) in the Shared Teaching area.
- Complete the New School Year setup process on each school site to copy over/promote courses and classes.
- Import your timetable as normal, mapping to the existing courses in Arbor. The import process will ignore any timetable slots connected to Shared Teaching courses.
- Add in the Shared Teaching timetable slots in the Shared Teaching area.
If you do not use Edval or TimeTabler, set up or copy over your courses through the New School Year setup area but exclude any Shared Teaching courses from your setup. You'll then need to create your Shared Teaching course in the Shared Teaching area.
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