From 1st June, the DfE have released the following guidance regarding attendance:
- X codes should be recorded for any pupil not in an eligible year group or priority group (children of critical workers and vulnerable children). This includes children who are in an eligible year group but are not required in school for a specific session.
- Y codes should be recorded where a pupil is shielding or self-isolating. We have updated Pupil Asset to allow you to record which of these is the case.
- I codes should be recorded as normal if a pupil cannot attend school due to illness. We have also added a ‘Covid-19’ tickbox to allow this to be specified for the DfE’s reporting.
- D codes should be recorded where a pupil is attending another school at which they are registered.
- B codes should be recorded where a pupil is attending a host school on a temporary basis because their home school cannot accommodate them.
- C codes should be recorded where a pupil does not attend school – despite being eligible and no other authorised absence types apply.
- At this time, all absence should be classed as authorised.
You can read the full guidance here.
Due to this, we have updated the system to allow schools to record whether an illness is due to Covid-19 and whether a pupil is currently shielding or self-isolating.
Set calendar dates to ‘open’
If your school is re-opening on 1st June make sure your term dates are no longer set as ‘Emergency Closure’.
You can do this by going to Admin > Calendar Setup and making sure the calendar dates from 1st June show in green.
If you have already set emergency closure dates beyond 1st June you can click on the red dates and set them to ‘Open’.
If you have too many dates to fix manually contact the support team who will be able to fix this for you.
If you haven’t already, make sure you enter the emergency closure dates in the partial closure function to record ‘#’ days. For most schools this will be from 23/03/2020 to 29/05/2020.
Recording additional info in office registers
Recording I and Y codes on Office > Registration > Registers will now prompt you to enter additional information if the illness is related to Covid-19 or the pupil’s Y code is due to self-isolation or shielding a family member.
Enter the information in the tick-box or drop-down box respectively and hit Save.
Allowing teachers to record additional information
In most schools, teachers will be limited in what attendance codes they can record.
Normal register processes can of course continue, with teachers recording ‘N’ codes for absences and office staff updating with the relevant codes.
If, however, you need teachers to be able to record the additional codes, you will first need to edit this in Admin > School Options > MIS Options.
Simply set the option to ‘All’ and click Save MIS Options.
Teachers will now be able to enter the additional info on their registers.
Similarly to the office register, when they enter an I or Y code they will be given the options to record the necessary details.
