Dear Colleagues,
Following the death of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II a period of National Mourning has started which will continue until the State Funeral on Monday 19th September. The date of the State Funeral will be Monday 19th September and this has been declared a Bank Holiday. Schools are not expected to remain open on this date.
As with other Bank Holidays, it is at the discretion of the individual settings for Early Years whether they close or remain open, but there is no expectation for Early Years and childcare settings to remain open on a bank holiday. Please refer to following DFE guidance for further information: National Mourning Advisory Education Guidance
Please find guidance on how to record school closure for the Royal Funeral in SIMS, Arbor and ScholarPack below: –
SIMS
You have 2 options.
Option 1) Add a Public Holiday via the School Diary
In SIMS select Focus | School | School Diary. Right click on Monday 19th September and you will see the option to select New Public Holiday. You will then get a pop up which will allow you to add appropriate details as follows:
Select ok to add.
If you are a secondary school with a timetable, we would also recommend that you reapply the timetable via Tools | Academic Management | Apply Timetable to ensure that all your timetable days are mapped correctly after the bank holiday.
Option 2) Edit the Academic Year Wizard
Running the Edit academic year routine can take a long time in SIMS we would advise carrying out this process at the end of the day when everyone is out of SIMS.
In SIMS select Routines | School | Edit Academic Year. In the Edit Academic Year Wizard next through each page until you see the Define Public Holidays Screen as follows:
Add in the Bank holiday and next through on the final screen Ready to update the academic year select Update. NB: Running the Edit academic year routine can take a long time in SIMS we would advise carrying out this process at the end of the day when everyone is out of SIMS.
Arbor
After following the instructions below, you will not need to open registers or take attendance on the 19th September, as there will be no registers.
To record the school as closed for the 19th, go to School > School Structure > Academic years and select this year.
Click the red Return to incomplete button before making changes.
Click+Add in the Holidays section to add planned whole school absences.
Fill in the relevant information in the slide over, and select the Holiday type as Public Holiday.
Once this holiday has been added, click the green Mark Calendar as Complete button to save your changes.
ScholarPack
To record school closure for a Bank Holiday, go to Admin > Config > Core Setup > Holidays.
At the base of the page, enter the Holiday as a Bank Holiday, and input the start and end dates as 19/09/2022. Click Add Holiday in order to apply the Code # in registers on that day.
You may wish to refer to this guidance on recording unexpected school closures, as it provides information regarding Meals and Clubs if you use these modules in ScholarPack: Recording an Unexpected School Closure.
If you require any assistance with this please log a ticket on our customer portal https://my.www.schoolicts.co.uk/ and we will call you back.
Kind regards,
School ICT.
