Attendance: Y13 students who finish their day early (free periods in afternoon)

[pete]

One of our schools is considering letting Y13 students who have no more lessons to finish their school day from lunchtime onwards (assuming no lessons in the afternoon).

 

If any of you do this, how do you easily distinguish between "I intend to finish my school day and leave" and "I have a free afternoon, but I intend to come back after lunch to do $whatever in school"? 

 

Our concern is making sure we know who's "missing" (and we need to search for).

 

Do students register "I'm going out to lunch" and "I don't intend to return" via different methods?  Or can they do both via the same method?

 

What're you using?  Is it decent from a student/attendance officer point-of-view? 

 

The school has Bromcom and LiveRegister for Y12/Y13 "out to lunch/back from lunch/PM reg if it's between ~13:50 and 14:10", but it's not flexible enough to offer a "do you intend to return?" option.

[Rob_D]

We don't have Y13, but for similar (kids go out for dentist appointments, etc. and might or might not come back), they're registered as off-site when they leave and registered back in when they return. I think we could do this automagically through Sign In App, but don't because our situation doesn't have a high volume of students coming and going so the reception staff can just register them in Bromcom.

[Devaleth]

Yep I think this is something that you will need to track at your reception with whatever sign in/out systems you use. We don't allow our sixth form to go offsite for lunch (no local provision) but if we did we would simply have a sign-out reason (for us on InVentry) that indicated they would return which could then be cross-referenced if required against sign-ins.

 

To be honest I would suggest that once the students have left the school site, assuming that you have appropriately informed parents (ie. arrangements agreed in advance), it's not really on the school to be checking if they've not returned unless they are then missing some kind of timetabled activity. Definitely take a look at your learner agreements etc and firm that up if necessary.