With the end of year on the horizon we’ve simplified how the process works with a change to how groups are managed.
Groups are no longer labelled ‘future, archived, permanent’. Groups have an academic year, defined by the start and end date. This will affect the way groups are set up and filtered; you don’t have to select an ‘archive’ or ‘future’ option, you select an academic year, which will default to today.
The way you create a group is almost identical. Add a group or class from the ‘+’ button, assign a name and a description if needed, then assign an academic year.
This is the change in logic, instead of creating a “future group” you create a group for the academic year it is in. If it’s necessary, there is an option to refine the start and end date for any new group, otherwise it will take the relevant dates from the academic year you assign it to.
When choosing an academic year to give to a new group you also get the option to create as a ‘permanent’ group, which means that the group will always be active. This is useful for groups that you will use all year, every year, that you can’t use the filter for. A reading group, football team, or an intervention group for example.
The permanent group stays when you start a new academic year, but maintains the same pupils, so that you can periodically update who is in that group.
This simple change to how you think about groups will save you time when completing your end of year admin.
In Pupils > Groups > Advanced there is a list of all your current groups. You can select which groups you’d like to clone (keeping the same pupils), the academic year you’d like to clone them into, and assign each group their new name; 1A can become 2A, Hedgehogs can become Ladybirds, all from one screen.
If you have classes with mixed year groups, you have a couple of options. You can clone your groups in Pupils > Groups > Advanced and then manually move the pupils that have moved up a group. Or you can create a new group for the next academic year and add the relevant pupils to it.
It’s simple, quick, and makes for a more efficient Roll Up procedure.
For more information, you can read our how to guide: How to set up classes and pupil groups.