Pupil Reconciliation for the Spring Census

On Spring Census day, you’ll need to reconcile the number of pupils on roll with the number of pupils enrolled in your classes - click here for further details from the DfE.

Go to the Pupil Reconciliation section from the left-hand menu of your census. This is what the page will look like before census day.

On census day, you’ll see a count of the number of students enrolled at your school and the number of students scheduled to be in class at the time of your census.

• If the number of students enrolled and the number of students scheduled to be in class is the same, then no further action is needed.
• If the number of students enrolled and the number of students scheduled to be in class is different, you’ll need to reconcile the number of pupils on roll with the number of pupils in classes or elsewhere. Use the section below to do this.

 

Step 1 - Add in your pupil reconciliation numbers

You’ll need to enter the number of pupils in each of the following groups at the time of the census:

• Part-time students who were not required to be in school
• Pupils engaged in private study at the selected time
• Pupils attending another school at the selected time (such as dual-registered students)
• Pupils attending work experience instead of regular classes
• Pupils attending FE college

To add the number of students in each group, click one of the fields and add in the number.

For example, I know that I have 5 students in nursery school who are not required to be in school on census day. I can click the Part time not in field to add this, and all my other numbers in. Then click Save Changes.

 

Then check your pupil reconciliation numbers again.

• If the number of students enrolled and the number of students scheduled to be in class is the same, then no further action is needed.
• If the number of students enrolled and the number of students scheduled to be in class is different, you’ll need to use the reconciliation status section of the census. Use the section below to do this.

Step 2 - Check your class numbers using the Reconciliation status section

On the Pupil Reconciliation page, click the Reconciliation status field.

You’ll see the number of students that are enrolled in your school that are not reconciled. This number is pupils on roll minus the number of pupils in class, private study, at another school, work experience, college or part-time. An example can be seen below.

Before you submit your census, you’ll need to get this number down to 0. To help you do this, we’ve included information on the numbers of students enrolled in each class on census day in the slide over.

 

For classes where the numbers of Home pupils given and Actual students in class match, no action is needed.

 

Any students who are scheduled to be in more than one class at the time of the census will be flagged to you. You’ll need to resolve this issue, as shown in the next section.

 

Step 3 - Resolve students enrolled in more than one class

Children should only be enrolled in one class at a time (this does not include internal exclusions, interventions, trips etc.), so you will need to remove the extra enrolment for any children enrolled on more than one class at the time of the census.

Resolve mistakes in enrolment

For the example below, I can see Eden Griffiths has been accidentally enrolled in both the Reception registration class (Registration: Reception: Form REEZ), and a year 9 sports class (Sports: Year 9: Y9Set2). As she is a reception student, this is most definitely wrong. I’m going to go to her student profile and remove the enrollment into the incorrect year 9 class.

 

For this example, go to the Enrolment section of the Student Profile. You’ll see the student’s enrolment into the school, academic year, year group, registration form, house etc. The action you’ll need to take will depend on how they’ve been enrolled incorrectly.

In this example, the student has been enrolled in the wrong course by mistake, so I’m going to click on the course from the Courses section, then click Edit in the slide over.

 

You can then amend the enrolment dates, or remove the enrolment. Click the red button to delete the enrolment (only do this if they were added to the course by mistake and they never attended).

 

Once you’ve made this change, the pupil reconciliation slide over will show a discrepancy between the number of Home pupils given and the Actual Students in class.

 

Resolve this discrepancy by going to the Classes section of the census from the left-hand side of the census pages. Scroll down to the right class and click on it to amend the numbers.

In the slide over, adjust the numbers of students to the right number, then click Save Changes. This number must reflect the actual number of students in the class.

 

Back in the Pupil Reconciliation section, the numbers in this class will now be reconciled.

 

Students who should be enrolled in both classes

You may have students who should be enrolled in more than one class at the time of the census, but they usually only attend one lesson out of the two.

In these scenarios, you will need to add a Student Timetable Slot Exception. This will remove them from the other class for the time of the census so they are not logged as being in more than one class at the same time. They will then be filtered out of the home pupils count for the related lesson in the census.

Follow the instructions here to add a Student Timetable Slot Exception for the student for the time of the census: Fix clashes where students are enrolled into multiple lessons

 

Step 4 - Resolve students enrolled but not in class

In the Pupil Reconciliation section, you will also be shown a list of students who are not scheduled into any classes at the time of the census.

You can click on their name to access their timetable and add them to classes or complete further actions.

 

There’s several reasons why a student would show as not being enrolled in a class at the time of the census. We’re going to work through how to resolve the four most common:

1. The student should not be on-roll and has been enrolled in the year incorrectly
2. The student has been missed off from being enrolled in a class
3. You only have interventions, not classes logged for the student
4. You’ve added nursery students from a legally separate school to your site
5. Your school has not scheduled classes correctly for primary age students

Scenario 1

Sometimes, a student who was meant to attend your school but never actually attended may have stayed enrolled and had attendance marks put in. You’ll need to unenroll the student and remove all their attendance marks to stop them from showing in your list of students to reconcile. To do this, you can use the instructions in this handy article: Removing all attendance marks for a student

Scenario 2

If a student is meant to be in a class at the time of the census but has accidentally been missed, you should add in their enrolment. When you click their name in the Students enrolled but not in a class list, you’ll be able to see the gap in their calendar on census day.

You’ll need to add enrolments for the student. To do this, you can use the instructions here: Adding missing class enrolments

Scenario 3

If the students are on an alternative curriculum, you may have scheduled this using Interventions.

As the census won't pull in Interventions, you will need to create a dummy course for this student with a single lesson that falls on the time of the census: Set up a course

Scenario 4

You may have nursery students who have not been enrolled in classes if you only use Arbor to record their information and not take attendance.

To exclude them from your census, you will need to set them as Guest pupils and set the number of guest pupils in your Pupil reconciliation. You can see how to do this here: Nursery students - Guest pupils for the census

Scenario 5

You’ll need to make sure your timetable slots for your primary classes last the whole morning (until the start of lunch), and your afternoon session lasts the whole afternoon (until the end of the day), so students are logged as being in a class at the time of the census.

In the census pupil reconciliation, clicking on a student who isn't in any classes at the time of census, I can see his calendar looks very empty!

 

As primary classes often only have one class in each room with the same teacher and don’t move around, registers are only required for AM and PM statutory roll call.

For the census, you’ll need to make sure your classes span the whole morning, and the whole afternoon, rather than only the roll call period. You’ll need to amend your timetable slots for your primary classes to make sure the morning session lasts the whole morning (until the start of lunch), and your afternoon session lasts the whole afternoon (until the end of the day).

To amend the timetable slots, go to School > Timetable > Timetable Administration > Timetable Slots.

 

Here I can see that all the morning slots are set to end at 9:00 when they should end at the beginning of lunch. To amend this, select all the morning periods, and click the Bulk action button to choose Edit Start and End Time.

In the slide over, amend the end time to the correct time, then click Save Changes.

 

Wait for the changes to clear from the Scheduling tab, then return to your census.

Once you regenerate your census, any of the students in the class you’ve amended the slots for, who were showing as having no class at the time of the census, will no longer show in the list.