[sims] Attendance Mode and registers

[R2-D2]

Our scenario: small primary school with a Nursery that has a morning and an afternoon session (with completely different pupils in each). We're trying to use SIMS to take the registers electronically, but despite the Attendance Mode data (AM/PM/All day) being entered accurately for every pupil in the school, the register for the Nursery teacher lists all nursery pupils for both AM and PM sessions. Is this a bug or a 'feature'? Or have we done something wrong?

 

My first thought was to create a second registration group for the Nursery teacher, and then manually separate the AM and PM pupils. But this then offers both groups for AM and PM registers, confusing the teacher's home page and they need to right-click to select the correct group (rather than just double-clicking).

[rh91uk]

R2-D2, I think I may be slightly confused here ... but are they selecting their class group off the "My Classes Timeline" and still getting both groups? If you go to (I think if I remember pre lesson monitor), Focus -> Attedance -> Take Register, does the teacher have one group on the timeline or more than one for that particular time of the day?

 

Sorry for the confusion

[Sivadam]

You probably need to set up the 2 nursery classes (AM & PM) so that they contain part-time pupils!

On SupportNet refer to:- KB80731 - Part time pupils in Attendance 7.

Edited January 16, 2011 by Sivadam

[R2-D2]

You probably need to set up the 2 nursery classes (AM & PM) so that they contain part-time pupils!

Ah, that makes sense, and it could be something that has been overlooked -- I'll check it out tomorrow. Thanks!

[Sivadam]

The procedure is pretty simple.

You can have the pupils in either one Nursery Class (Reg Group) or two, as you can define each pupil individually!

[GeeHubb]

We had a nursery several years ago with the same scenario. I had each group set up as a separate registration group (which in effect it was). The problem I had was assigning the same teacher to both registration groups. If my memory serves me correctly, the only way I could do this was to set up the teacher twice in Personnel, but I suspect that has now been addressed.

[Sivadam]

You can have them in the same Reg Group tho' and assign them to the correct Session via the Part-time route above!

[GeeHubb]

.. Now I'm confused too. If you have them all in one registration group, don't they all show up in the one register (even if their part-time attendance has been defined)? Mind you it would have solved my problem with the same teacher assigned to both reg groups. At that time we had three intakes to Nursery and Infants a year, so they were on a rolling programme each term of joining and leaving nursery and school (it was a nightmare to organise I seem to remember!).

[R2-D2]

Setting up the part-time attendance with "Attendance required only in the mornings" for the AM pupils (and similar for the PM ones) seems to work a bit better than the free-for-all we had. What it does is automatically mark the AM pupils with an "X" in the PM register (and similar for the PM ones). But what it doesn't do is restrict the register lists presented to the teacher to just the applicable pupils. Giving a teacher multiple registration groups would probably solve that, but it makes the teacher's home page more confusing (the register bit is bright red with the registration groups hidden on a right-click...).

 

It's a shame that this AM/PM distinction can't just be entered once in one place for each pupil and SIMS sorts everything out from there.