Switch off taking lesson attendance registers for a class

This article explains how to disable attendance registers for a class, ensuring that no future registers will be taken. It highlights considerations such as the visibility of events in calendars, the status of students, and the importance of statutory roll call attendance. The process involves navigating to the course settings and selecting the option to stop taking attendance.

You can stop taking attendance for a class, so there will be no registers for the class in the future.

Before you complete this process, you'll need to make sure this is the correct process as there are other features that may suit your needs better.

• Do you want the events to appear in staff and student calendars? If you don't, you can't use this feature as they will still show in calendars.
• Are the students on study leave or some other activity where they are out of normal lessons? If so, you should suspend the lessons instead.
• Is the class no longer taking place? If so, you should end the timetable slots in bulk so they don't appear in calendars.

Also be sure to check when your school's roll call times are to see if this lesson contributes to your statutory roll call attendance: Check your attendance settings. If your lesson does overlap with your roll call times, you'll need to make sure that there is another lesson that also overlaps, or students won't have any statutory roll call attendance for that session.

How does switching off attendance work?

When attendance is switched off, the event will still appear in student and staff calendars. However, you just can't take a register for the session.

This is what the Lesson Dashboard usually looks like.

This is what the Lesson Dashboard looks like when attendance taking is disabled. Notice the Take Register button is gone, and you can't access the register from the left-hand menu.

How to switch off attendance

Go to School > Programmes > Courses and select the course (you may need to click + to get to the bottom-level course).

On the course overview, click the Take attendance? field.

In the slide over, click the Don't take attendance button. This will remove the registers for any future sessions, but won't remove any registers or attendance marks that have already taken place.