When a school has to:
- close for a polling or voting day
- unexpectedly close (e.g. due to weather conditions or school maintenance issues)
you will need to close the school registers for all students.
Registers
In order to do this, go to Register > Manage Register.
Above the View Register button, you will see the Quick Dates section. Click 'Today Only' or enter the date range for the period you would like to record.
If it is a part day closure, select the appropriate AM or PM field on the left side as it will default to 'Both' (all day).
Click View Register to retrieve all students on roll and make sure all students are selected with ticks on the right hand side of the table.
At the base of the student table, select the code you wish to apply to all students from the drop-down menu. If any students have an existing code in place, you may choose to tick the box 'overwrite' to ensure all students have the same code for school closure. Then click Fill Spaces.
In order to select the most appropriate code, you can access the full range of Department for Education attendance codes at the top left of the screen.
Half day closure
Follow the instructions as for a full day, but in the "Date From" and "Date To" boxes, set both of them to the date of the half day. Select the AM or PM option to reflect which half of the day the school was closed.
You'll see in the table your students, with just the one attendance session showing next to each name.
- Tick the box below the heading titled "Select" in order to check/uncheck all of the boxes in the righthand column. This will ensure any changes you make will apply to every student's entry on the list.
- Scroll to the bottom of this table and from the "Choose Code" dropdown menu at the end, select the required "# - School Closed to All Pupils" code, and then tick the "Overwrite" box. Finally, click the "Fill Gaps" button to set every pupil's attendance code for that half-day as "School Closed to All Pupils".
- Your list of students should now have the "#" attendance code recorded for the just the one session.
Removing meals
If you use the Meals module, follow these instructions: Remove Meals During a School Closure
Cancelling a clubs session
If you use the Clubs module, and a club session was timetabled to run on that day, go to Admin > Config > Clubs (or Workspace > Clubs)
Check the date on This Week's Clubs tab, click on a club due to run, then Cancel Session.
You will be given the option to record why the session was cancelled for your records. No students will be charged for non attendance (if costings apply) if a session is cancelled. You will need to click again on Cancel Session to save any notes entered, even if you opt to leave the notes field blank.
Sending a Comms message
Direct comms
Although only existing contacts can receive bulk messages, individual email addresses can be added to the recipient list of a bulk email communication by entering their email addresses manually in the "Email directly" text box:
If you need to send the message to more than one individual email address, you can separate them with a comma and a space (e.g: example01@email.com, example02@email.com).
You will not be able to save the bespoke contact list to ScholarPack, however you can always save your list of additional email addresses to a Word document so that you can copy and paste them over each time you need it.
To all student contacts
in Admin > Comms you can Add all from Year Groups to the contacts list, prior to sending a comms message.
Y
ou may also wish to notify contacts for students in a particular club session that was cancelled, as all active clubs are available in Comms in order to message their members.