Stage 1 – Registration

Registration will be carried out at the beginning morning and afternoon sessions and registers will be marked promptly within the first fifteen minutes of these sessions. The time keeping and quality of the registers drive the mechanics for the next stage, as a result, failure to take accurate registers may lead to the leadership taking any appropriate action against individual members of staff.

(See also DfE guidance ‘School Attendance - Guidance for maintained schools, academies, independent schools and local authorities – August 2020 (plus the addendum to this guidance) ’ and DfE guidance ‘School attendance parental responsibility measures’

1. No pupil should be marked present unless actually present in the room when the register is taken or unless he or she has been given permission to be absent by the registering teacher.
2. Spaces must not be left in the register.
3. Registers should be closed at an agreed time each day - Registers will close 30 minutes after the start of the morning session.
4. Where a pupil arrives late but the register is still open, the pupil should be marked as late ‘L’ – code, but counted as present for that session.
5. Where a pupil misses registration (arrives after registration has closed) absence must be marked as an unauthorised absence – ‘U’ code
6. Where a pupil misses registration but provides an adequate explanation, s/he should be recorded as late if arriving before the register closes, but coded as an authorised absence for the session e.g. M for dental or medical appointment if arriving after the register closes.
7. Pupils must not mark the register under any circumstances.
8. Attendance data from registers should be monitored appropriately.
9. The decision to authorise an absence should be made within a maximum of ten school days from the date of the absence. If no reason has been provided during this time the absence should be recorded as unauthorised.

Computerised Registration:

We use BROMCOM management Information systems (MIS) to record attendance. Using an MIS system will not by itself improve attendance.  It does, however, provide an accessible, accurate and easy to use record of data and information relating to the individual pupil or whole school attendance in the form of data reports, these may include:

• a daily report of all absentees
• a register over any given time which codes all absences allowing the reader to quickly identify patterns and trends in authorised and unauthorised absences,
• an individual registration certificate per pupil which can be produced at any time in the school year and includes information on total percentage attendance, absence and punctuality,
• an absence-mapping facility which can be used to check a pupil’s attendance against another pupil, or a group of pupils’ attendance if there is a suspicion of multiple truancy,

• a record of attendance for each class over any given period of time which will provide a percentage attendance figure for each session and data which could identify patterns of absence for individuals as well as the whole class.
• Individual reports for vulnerable pupils and vulnerable groups of pupils.
• A list of all pupils who are persistent absentees (90% or below)

The school should follow up any absences to:

• • Ensure the proper safeguarding action is taken,
  • Ascertain the reason,
  • Identify whether the absence is approved or not; and,
  • Identify the correct code to use before entering it on to the school’s electronic register, or management information system which is used to download data to the School Census.

We will have a daily checking exercise to ensure register accuracy and further QA through monthly EWO analysis of coding.