TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Managing sport and carnival days
  • Setting up an Exceptional day
  • Processing attendance (SEQTA Mobile not used)
  • Processing attendance (using SEQTA Mobile)
    • Related articles:

Managing sport and carnival days

There may be occasions where a timetabled day needs to be replaced with a different timetable layout, typically for one day, such as a sports carnival or a cultural or religious festival.

The timetabling process in SEQTA can be set to use data synced from an external timetabling program (externally managed), or it can be set up entirely within SEQTA (internally managed). SEQTA uses a process called Exceptional day to allow a day change to be easily managed. An Exceptional day can work with either internally or externally managed timetables, but for externally managed timetables the timetabling program does need to be set up correctly so that the sync will work without errors.

A typical Exceptional day would replace a multi-period timetable structure with a single timetabled period, or two periods using AM and PM. On the day the teacher would mark the roll when students first come together, and possibly again at a lunch break. Roll marking can be done either on a paper copy of the roll, or using the Mobile attendance web page, if it is available to your school.
Another example where an exceptional day might be required is if there is a whole-school assembly once a term.

Setting up an Exceptional day

Please refer to Timetabling Exceptional Days .
 

Processing attendance (SEQTA Mobile not used)

1. Enter an attendance solution (at normal priority) for all students using the type Educational activity (or similar). This can be done through  Administration workspace > Attendance administration > Attendance manager.
2. Once the teachers have marked the paper roll they can then pass this to you to enter into the system.
3. Select all the students that are marked as absent on the paper roll. Next, enter an attendance solution of the type 'Absent' (the cross). Do not use another type otherwise the absentee SMSes won't work.
4. Send out the absentee SMSes (all students with an 'Absent' will be flagged for absentee SMSes). This can be done through the Administration workspace > Attendance administrator > Absentee SMSes
5. If your school is set to require an absence in 2 successive periods to trigger the Absentee SMS, then you should use Correspondence to send the SMS. This will require a preset to be configured for use during Exceptional day attendance processing.

Processing attendance (using SEQTA Mobile)

1. Teachers will mark the roll in the normal manner, but will use their smart phone or tablet.
2. When they log in to SEQTA Mobile they will see the period setup for the Exceptional day.
3. Attendance admins will resolve attendance in the normal manner, as long as the triggers for Absentee SMSes match the period structure in the Exceptional day.

Related articles:

• SEQTA Mobile
• Timetable day management