Electronic registration

[Sylv3r]

I have looked through the majority of the relevant posts on here but I still have a couple of questions unanswered.

 

We are set to launch electronic registration here from September:

 

1) We have assemblies for a different year group each morning, how do schools do the registers during assembly. We have thought about having period one as the statutory AM registration but we may then get students not turning up for assembly and going straight to the lesson.

 

2) How do schools do registration during PE lessons, the PDA route is not something I want to do if possible.

 

3) How do schools prepare the registers for when the fire bell goes? Do people print registration classes every morning after the AM statutory registration?

 

4) We are thinking about possibly rolling out the electronic attendance either by year group or by department. Did anybody do this or did they go out and start the whole at the same time.

 

If anybody else has any pitfalls that I haven't thought of that would be useful if you could mention those also.

 

Many Thanks

 

Andrew

[Ric_]

Background: Registration performed by a proximity card reader in each classroom (NEDAP)

 

1. We have a 'registrator' in the hall (where the assemblies take place)

2. We have a registrator in each of the changing rooms

3. Fire brigade told us we didn't need to bother doing this

4. I missed the initial role out but it was everyone in one go, running electronic registration alongside paper registration until we were happy that everyone was using the system correctly... we have since done away with afternoon registration

 

For school trips, failure of fixed registrators, etc. we have two mobile units that scan the cards and download the data via a cradle connected to a PC.

 

In the two libraries we also have registrators... this allows 6th form attendance to be monitored and library lessons to take place.

[MkII]

Which system are you going to use? SIMS?

 

1) 1st 10 minutes is registration time, and then assembly starts.

 

2) We use paper!

 

3) There is a thread on this. We don't pre-print a list.

 

4) We intended doing the 6th form first, and doing it by year as that's how our totor groups are geographically located. In the end tho', everyone took to it so easily, we rolled it out to the whole school at once.

 

We did do a lot of hand holding. Tried to make it as easy as possible for staff. Had it as a major part of training day - had Capita in to do presentations, and then set up a room for a day for people to come and have a play etc., as is part of the purchase price.

 

We only asked a bare minimum of staff to keep it simple for a start, introducing small extras as we've gone on.

 

Oh, and we did roll out PCs to every desk first, to use email, and got all staff using that.

 

Staff have really appreciated the PC access - online shopping at christmas was very popular!

 

We do per lesson registration, and 1st PM lesson reg is the stat one.

 

10 mins reg time added

[User3204]

1) We have AM registration seperate from assembly (which is mid-morning), I don't _think_ they do any registration in the actual assembly period.

 

2) Similar to _Ric, each teacher does the registration for the (double) lessons in the changing room.

 

3) Dunno, I don't see any teachers doing electronic registers during fire alarms. I suspect it's a paper list.... hmm..

 

4) We started it new in September (2005).

Things did not go well... we'd rushed in a wireless network, that was (and still is) flakey in some areas.

Whole school, everywhere... urgh.

 

The trouble with doing part of the school, would mean that teachers would "forget", they still forget with us, but the DHs get onto them.

 

If you can, roll it out with the computer literate ones first, as they will pick up on the problems and do something about it, whereas the others will just not bother.

 

We now do all lessons, AM and PM registration, there are only a few wireless blindspots left, and only teachers in these areas can get away with not doing them.

 

We have found that the teachers are using their laptops more than they used to, which is mostly good, although it has shortened the lifespan (of the laptops), and increased our storage needs.

[Sylv3r]

Thanks for all your input so far guys, very useful.

[Kyle]

I have seen both CMiS ePortal and SiMS used for this and both seem to work very well. My own preference would be ePortal but to answer your questions i would need to find out more details of what each individual school does.

[maniac]

We have a 10 minute registration period first thing for AM attendance. for PM attendance the system fills this in from the information taken for the period 6 lessons.

 

PE lessons are taken on a laptop by PE dept outside the changing rooms, it's the best method we can come up with, as E-Portal (which we use) doesn't display properly on a PDA which would have been better.

 

Fire bell registers are a nitemare. Suposidly the attendance office are supposed to have a full attendance report run off after AM registration. We also take laptops out with us in the event of a fire alarm, while we couldn't rely on them in the event of a real fire, if they do work then it helps.

 

Not sure how it was started at this school, I wasn't here! At my last school it was lanuched all in one go at the beginning of september with 2 staff training days devoted to training all staff on using the system before the start of term. It went fairly smoothly surprisingly.

 

Biggest pitfall is choosing the wrong system! there are many different offerings from different companies out there, so it's well worth getting as many as possible to come in and demo their tehnology so you can see the benefits of each system and how they might work in your school. Also if you are going for laptops and wireless network approach, make sure you test the wireless network throughly and get it installed by a reputable company. This can cause you more headaches than anything else if it's done wrong.

 

I've used 2 different registration systems - Bromcom and E-Portal/CMIS there are different strengths and weaknesses to both systems.

 

Mike

[ICTNUT]

@Ric_: We are looking at putting some form of electronic registration could you possibly provide me with some info on what you guys use at your place??

[NetworkGeezer]

@RIC does your e-REg system feed into SIMS or CMIS?

 

There must be a problem with kids loosing their cards.

[Geoff]

Ric uses Sims.NET.

[Ric_]

@ICTNUT: Check out http://www.nedap-education.com/en/main/ and maybe ring Jayne Cork on 07920 72 5953 and mention my name. I will also PM my number if you want a chat about it.

 

Our MIS is SIMS (as Geoff so rightly mentions) and there is a synchronisation between the NEDAP PreAbXS software and SIMS - which is currently being enhanced. I believe the system also works with CMIS and even better with Integris (others I do not know about).

 

Kids lose/forget/damage cards. They are given a temporary card for the day and then have to cough up a fiver for a new one (to cover the replacement card and printing). If a card is found to be faulty we replace it free of charge and claim it back of NEDAP.

[kxv2020]

SIMS.net Lesson Monitor 7 using teachers laptops through wired and Wireless connections.

 

 

1. We don't have morning Reg - all students go to their 1st lesson. In your case you could create a Assessmbly slot before P1 but P1 would still be the earliest marks.

 

2. Teachers take electronic registers by laptop in the changing rooms - its wireless!

 

3. We get the office to print registration classes every morning after the AM statutory registration.

 

4. We went with the Big bang theory [but were prepared and had paper registers just incase] as we moved from Bromcom to SIMS.net. However before we introduced Bromcom, we phased in by Year Group, 1 Year group at a time, solving problems if they arised.

 

Staff seem fine with it. Slight glitches as always with any system but nothing more. Teachers actually find it helpful to see the data SIMS hold as they never had access to it before!

 

There is an online solution ....SIMS Learning Gateway but it looks to be in its infancy just yet... so were getting our MS Learning Gateway sorted first and then we might consider it.

[GeorgeFaux]

1) Students go to classroom to be registered in a very short registration period and then into assembly. That was initially however doing what you suggest will raise your attendance figures significantly and means you can use a registration period as guidance or do away with it completely. Certainly in my experience starting with a lesson as opposed to registration which is not valued by students will improve punctuallity for the less hard core offenders.

 

2) A Seperate broadband line into the offsite changing rooms and then e-portal on a laptop as if it was being accessed from offsite. (suprisingly cheap to do)

 

3)In an Ideal world yes, but there are resource issues here. Most MIS have a button for an instant print out of registers in a fire situation. The issues will be procedural, how fast can you print and do you have an offsite printing facility. What if the fire is in the server room. The only truly safe argument is to do what you suggest but there must be a better way. Certainly a PDF file can be created of the registers and kept on a laptop.

 

4)I have never seen anyone try to do this non school wide if only because it will seriously compromise you abilitiy to get accurate summary data and SLASC returns.

[limbo]

A few people have talked about e-portal not showing properly on a PDA - I believe there is a PDA version that you can add on as a module.

 

Will almost certainly cost you something - but not sure how much. We used to have it through the deal the LEA did, but when they renewed the deal they took it out to try and save money as it was not widely used.

[Midget]

Here's some input. DO NOT even consider getting the Lisol Pathways system. despite what they say, it is not actually completed yet.

 

We use a webbased system for reg and use HP PDAs for PE and print outs for fire alarms, which is much MUCH better than using the Bromcom PDAs [/sarcasm]

[bossman]

We were advised a long long time ago not to even contemplate going the Bromcom way and it has been good advice which has saved us a fortune.

 

As for Registration we have AM reg and our PM reg is incorporated with lesson 4 of our scheduled timetable as you can see from the attached jpg

[GeorgeFaux]

Indeed, I think that is becoming very popular, the idea of registration is starting to be an outmoded concept. Guidance is replacing it. Consider that two 15 min registration periods per day is over 100 hours of teaching time in a full academic year.

[TechMonkey]

We have gone to registering electronically for every lesson and tying in P1 to the AM mandatory and P6 (lesson after Lunch) to PM Mandatory.

 

Couldn't tell you if it has benefitted the school or not, but does seem a better use of time then a registration period.

[mrtechsystems]

Thanks for the information keep comming I am using Sims.NET here and this information is really useful

 

Cheers ppl :-)

[Sylv3r]

Thanks for all your help guys. Im meeting with the deputy head early next week to put together how we will shape it happening as of September.

[jenny_urey]

The following is based on my experience with schools using our PARS electronic attendance however should apply to you also:

) Am period mapped to period 1 assembly as you could a lesson.

 

2) PDA is usually the route however once again depends on your electronic attendance. If out of wireless area, PDAs can be sync'd. If PDA not feasilble then either use a nearby / office PC to register or use a paper register at the begining of the lesson and get a student to the run the register to the office for your attendance officer to enter.

 

3) No point in using an am register for a fire. What happens if a student arrives late for school yet not in the fire assembly yard? Your electronic attendance should have a section for fire so you can see up to date registration data. You should be able to have this data available on a removable device(s) ie laptop, pda, tablet and if anyone missing in the assembly area then you can straight away see a list of students who have been absent all day.

 

4) My advice is always to do a year at a time- yr7 is always nice to start. No point choosing teachers to pilot as other teachers will complain. As soon as all teachers n that year are happy and confident then you should hear a buzz in the staffroom and other teachers are more willing to have a go. You will alwas be faced with negativity when introducing a new system into a school however I'm sure you are aware of that.

 

If anybody else has any pitfalls that I haven't thought of that would be useful if you could mention those also....

 

You will always find a couple of teachers who will be reluctant in taking their registers and these need to be picked out early and trained further. My motto is attendance data is only as good as its worst marker!

If your system allows, run a missing registers report daily and keep on top of it. My suggestion here is make sure the curriculum leaders are fully trained on the system, make sure they train their team. if there are missing registers let them deal with it... if a teacher is not taking registers properly it means the subject attendance results will be incorrect (missing marks are classed as unauthorised absence) - this will also mean the curiculum leader will be questionned why his/her subject attendance is low and could also compromise their postion as a senior team leader. Plus when you have the DCFS knocking on your dor asking about your subject attendance you need to be prepared wth good results.

 

Attendance officers can sometimes have a mare chasing missing registers and trying to get teachers to do them ontime which can stop them doing other jobs. They need the help of senior management for this as they can feel like they are banging their head against a brick wall.

 

I do despair when I visit schools and they say 'I cant get my teachers to take their registers'.... I see it from all points of view, positives and negatives to taking registers however the ultimate question is; who is managing your school? This is about educating and improving our students in a safe and managed environment. ....... As you can probably tell i'm passionate about what I do and schools I work with getting good results and with comments like this its rather annoying!

 

I'm working from home and cant see if its our software you have... we do have a St Bedes although i'm not sure you are from the same school?!?

 

If you are, please send me an email and I can send you step by step tutor guides and attendance handbooks...

 

Jenny Urey

PARS Training Officer

TASC Software

[jenny_urey]

Just to finish off... (sorry)

 

Many schools are sticking with an am registration with their form tutor and dropping the pm register period of usually 5 mins. The pm session register is taken during the first lesson after lunch.

 

Schools can be large and it can take students 5 mins to walk one end of the school to the other so a 5 min afternoon reg is not practical. It also stops students walking around the school, gives extra learning time.

 

I have also had a couple of schools who had issues with truancy and now have their pm form register at the end of the day. This has stopped students skipping classes in afternoons and going home early. It has also helped prevent students missing buses after schools as lesson teachers have not held then back.

 

Attendance policies and best practise can differ and no two schools are the same. What works in one school may not necessarily work in another.

[GeorgeFaux]

I agree with Jenny many MIS systems will happily take the first afternoon lesson as the registration period.

 

As to having a session last thing. This is a double edged sword, I have seen it tried but not seen any solid evidence it improves afternoon attendance. Firstly because it encourages long lunch syndrome, especially among those who are allowed off site.

 

Secondly the last session is sometimes more sparsley attended by those students who see no value in it and from a statistical point of view this risks losing the whole afternoons attendance if they skip off early. Of course this is far more of a risk if the school does not use lesson by lesson registration.

 

It all depends on how hardcore the truanters are and very much on the presence of the form tutors.