February 2023 News Blog Post

• Changes to Timetable Cycles are now only possible between 2pm and 5pm each day.
• Arbor have updated your To Do list on My Homepage to only flag the most important potential login issues – duplicate emails for current or future staff. They have also improved the duplicates page by splitting out your report to show staff, guardian and student issues separately, so you can prioritise what to resolve first. Take a look at our updated guidance here: Duplicate email addresses
• Once your users get logged in, you can use our new Login History page to view when they have logged in, plus whether they have logged in using Single sign-on (SSO) and Two-factor authentication.
• If you use Google or Microsoft Single Sign-on (SSO), you can also enable our new Bypass two-factor authentication option to only require Arbor Two-factor authentication when using the Arbor Username and Password, but not when logging in with Single sign-on (SSO).

• Create new SMS and email templates to notify guardians about behaviour incidents or detentions. Add detail with Arbor’s built-in merge fields or set different messages for different severity levels.
• Detention information on the parent portal now has room numbers.
• Year Group and Registration Form have now been added to the list of unassigned detentions.

Did you know that by using Behaviour workflows in Arbor you can set to incidents to escalate to the next severity level automatically by setting a threshold? This will escalate if more than one of your chosen number of incidents is logged within a 7/14/month or termly period. See this article here for more information. Setting up Behavior Workflows

• Now when going to Students > Demographics > Derived Indicators, you will see a handy list rather than more pages to select. Click on an indicator type, then select your demographic in the filters. You can also filter by student group, or switch to view the inverse of the demographic.
• Instead of different options for logging behaviour points for each scale in menus and Quick Actions, you can now log or report on points from one place – just use the filters to select your Point award scale. Please note: Any Live Feeds from these pages will need to be set up again.

• We will use your schools short name when sending emails from the MAT MIS. Your schools can set this from the School > School Details page.
• See Behaviour Incidents that take place on certain dates on the Behavioural Incidents Dashboard.
• Jump to the main Behaviour Incident from the Student Involvement overview using the View Behavioural Incident button.
• Charts, such as the horizontal bar charts on MAT MIS, are now keyboard controllable.

1.      Students / Attendance / Bulk Edit Marks Standard

2.      Use the filters to select the students, ensure start, and end dates are correct

3.      Click the Bulk Action button and select Bulk Set Absent

4.      In the slide over select the attendance mark for a strike day e.g., Y

5.      Click on Bulk Set Marks

6.      You will receive a notification in the top right of your MIS when the change has been completed. It can take some time to load depending on the number of students selected.

More detailed guidance can be found on our newsfeed here on managing staff, clubs and trips etc.

https://www.schoolicts.co.uk/latest-news/

The NEU has announced upcoming strike action taking place on 7 days across February and March 2023.

Action will take place on the following days, meaning each school will be affected on a maximum of four dates:

·        1 February: All schools in England and Wales

·        14 February: All schools in Wales

·        28 February: North and north-west England, Yorkshire and Humber

·        1 March: East Midlands, West Midlands, and the NEU’s eastern region

·        2 March: South-east and south-west England, and London

·        15 March: All schools in England and Wales

·        16 March: All schools in England and Wales

For general details on managing strikes in schools, please see the DfE’s guidance here: Handling strike action in schools

Arbor’s parent company The Key Group have also created a free resource to help you navigate the impact of the strikes – you can find it on their website here: Industrial action FAQs

Managing staff

Recording staff absences

You’ll need to record if any staff are absent from your school on strike days for the Workforce Census.

First, decide how to record the staff absences. The DfE advises to use the Absence category of Unauthorised absence. You can either use:

·        the Unauthorised absence category

·        the Strike Absence category – this option maps back to Unauthorised absence in the Workforce census, but is useful if you want to specifically report on industrial action

Please note it is not possible to create your own Absence category.

You can see how to record staff absences here: Add a staff absence

Assigning cover

1.      Any classes that no longer have a teacher will be flagged as needing cover.

2.      Make sure you have added any cover teachers to Arbor: Creating supply teachers or cover teachers in Arbor

3.      You can then assign them to cover the classes: How to assign cover

4.      They’ll then be able to take the class – you can see how they can do this here: How a teacher can take attendance and the meal register

Managing student attendance

In this case, the recommendation from Arbor is that schools should not add a holidays into your Academic Calendar. This is because:

·        Schools may be open for some students so need to take attendance for them

·        adding a holiday marks students with the # attendance code, but the DfE advises to use the Y code

Students who are still attending

Schools may wish to set up a class for students who are still attending on strike days, rather than marking them directly in the normal register.

5.      You can identify any students who will still be attending (such as those who are Vulnerable or children of Key Workers).

6.      You may wish to set up a class for students these students who are still attending on strike days, rather than marking them directly in the normal register. You can see how to create the class here – we recommend scheduling them as one-off lessons: Set up Course, Class, Registration and Lesson registers

7.      Teachers will then be able to take the class in the same way as a normal day’s lesson – you can see how they can do this here: How a teacher can take attendance and the meal register

Note: These students can be marked absent alongside the other students in their normal register, because only the Best Mark will be used as the student’s statutory attendance mark.

Taking attendance for students who won’t be attending.

For the students who wont be in attendance, you can add in a planned absence with the right pre-fill attendance code (likely the Y code) to pull through to the registers:  See our School ICTS article here on  How to add an exceptional circumstance (Y code) or Arbor’s article Adding and viewing Planned Absences and future pre-fill marks

On the day of the partial closure, you’ll need to open the registers for the planned absence marks to pull through, as this will not update marks automatically. Go to Students > Attendance, click into that class’ register and click the Open Register button to open it and pull through the marks. You can then edit any marks from the Bulk Edit Marks pages if needed.

Other areas

Meals

Once attendance has been taken, any students who are absent will pull through as Absent on the Meal Register, but you can update any student meal choices as needed: How can I change the meal choice for students for one day?

Clubs, trips and wraparound care

If you didn’t add a closure into your academic calendar, your clubs, trips and wraparound care events that take place on that day won’t be removed. You’ll just need to make any refunds or cancellations for sessions that are no longer taking place by following these instructions:

•         Cancelling and Refunding Club memberships
•         Cancelling Trip participation and making refunds
•         Cancelling and refunding breakfast club or after-school club memberships

You can merge your duplicate student contacts at Admin > Config > Manage Duplicate Contacts. You will need the full Admin user role for this area.

Here you will see all the duplicate records you have for each contact as they are grouped by name. Siblings need to be linked to the same contact details rather than a separate contact record set up for each one.

Linking siblings to the same contact ID enables your records to be kept in good order (e.g., only one record needs updating with new mobile or email numbers, instead of updating each contact record). This is also a requirement for the Parents App, so that one contact ID will display each child’s information on the app and only one Parents App code required per contact. If a Parent using the App can only see one of their children, it often means you have duplicate contact IDs for them, and you need to check in the Manage Duplicate Contacts area in ScholarPack. By merging the contacts, they will see all their children in the App.

To merge contact data, click on the one Contact ID you wish to keep, then click Merge so that additional contacts with the same data get merged into one record. If this contact is a Contact 3 and different relationship on another student profile, it will merge but still keep the contact relationship and order. The old contact ID on that profile is then removed and a new merged one established.

If you have contacts with the same name, but different addresses and contact details (i.e., they are different people and not connected), you can click on Exclude from Merge, prior to selecting the one you wish to combine others to and then clicking on Merge.

Data Genie – Virtual Data Managers (VDM).

When maintaining your schools data is not possible, our Virtual Data Genie team enables you to maintain, enhance or completely outsource your schools data management, ensuring best practice and continuity of your schools data, at all times. Whether it be a one off to support with a particular time of year such as census or exams, for a short to medium term period like maternity or sickness cover, or if you’re perhaps struggling to recruit – to fully outsource your schools Data Management, we can provide a solution.

For further information on this new service from School ICT, please visit: Data Genie or call: 0345 222 6802 – option 3 or e-mail: enquiries@schoolicts.co.uk.