Introductions

Compass provides a detailed and accurate approach to reporting of Student Attendance by allowing schools to be very specific in their rolls’ context. Compass not only works on a Period by Period basis, but also allows time based activities. This means that activities such as Examinations or Meetings can be undertaken outside of a schools regular period structure, whilst still accurately monitoring attendance.

There are two major concepts which Compass Attendance Module is built upon, the Attendance Cake and Student Attendance Status’. Each of these concepts, when combined and adopted provides schools with the ability to accurately record and analyse student attendance with ease.

For additional details on Attendance Consolidation including explanation on the 2023 changes to Victorian attendance calculations, please refer to the Attendance Consolidation section of this article further below.

The Compass Attendance model can be likened to a cake. Each layer of the ‘Attendance Cake’ is considered to provide an overall attendance for a period of time. The image below provides a visual representation of the model on which Compass works.

 The ‘bottom’ layer is the students Standard Classes which are imported from your school's timetabling package such as Edval or Timetabler or constructed via Schedule Builder. Standard Classes also include other scheduled classes from inside Compass such as Custom Classes, Literacy and Numeracy classes.

The next layer of the cake is the Events layer which is those activities which the school has scheduled for students to attend. An ‘Event’ has its own roll and may overlap a period, or number of periods.

Adhoc School Activities are the next layer of the Attendance Cake; these are activities that do not have rolls associated with them (students are just considered 'present' in that activity).

The top of the cake is the Note/Approvals layer; these are approvals for student absence for which the student’s parent or guardian has provided approval for.

Compass calculates the student’s attendance based on these different layers, where a layer higher in the cake has an effect on the students attendance lower down the cake.

By a student being marked ‘Present’ in an Event, such as School Excursion, they are automatically pre-selected in their Standard Classes role as ‘Not Present: School Explained’

To further clarify, consider the following example:

A student has a scheduled excursion which runs from 8:00AM until 1:30PM. This time overlaps Period 1 through to Period 4 where the student has Normal Classes scheduled.

The teacher who is responsible for the excursion marks the student ‘Present’ for the excursion.

This action will have a flow-on effect and automatically prefill the student’s rolls for periods 1 through 4 to ‘Not Present:  School Explained’ 

Attendance Status

Compass’ attendance system is based around three statuses: Present, Not Present and Late. Each of these statuses has a specific usage which is described below.

Present

Present is the default status that each student has selected in each roll. A student is only considered present if they are actually in that specific class. If a student is in a custom class, for example, even if the teacher of the student's normal class knows they will be in their custom class, they should be marked ‘Not Present’ in their normal class as Compass will automatically record that the student is in their custom class.

Not Present

A student is classified as Not Present whenever they do not attend a class. If the teacher is aware of the student attending an excursion or custom class, they should still mark the student as Not Present.

Consider the case of a Student who in period 3 has their regular English class, but they also have a custom class. If the student is marked Present in their custom class and Not Present in English, the net result is that the Student is Present in their custom class and Not Present: School Explained in English.

The Not Present status can be further broken down into three sub-statuses

• Not Present: Unexplained
• Not Present: School Explained
  
  • A ‘Not Present: School Explained’ status is used when the student has a scheduling overlap, such as the example used above with a custom class overlapping an English class. It can also be used where the student has undertaken an activity in the Events or Manual School Activities list discussed earlier
• Not Present: Parent Explained
  
  • The status of Not Present: Parent Explained is when the student’s parent has provided notification of a reason why the student did not attend the specific class. This could be for a variety of reasons such as medical, dental or a family holiday.

When a student is marked as 'Not Present' for a long session (ie an all day event), if they have been marked 'Present' on other shorter sessions (the shorter sessions must all be on the same attendance layer as each other) for the day, they will be marked as 'Not Present:Explained' in the longer session.  If the shorter sessions as a total equate to a time of less than 40% of the long single session, then even if the student is marked 'Present' in each of the shorter sessions, they will be marked as 'Not Present:Unexplained' for the long session.

In the below example, the Student Council, Interschool Tennis and Rehearsal activities that the student is 'Present' for will add together to account for the student's 'Not Present' at the Study Tour event resulting in the event's attendance for the student being 'Not Present:Explained'.
     

Late

When a teacher marks a roll, if a student has not arrived in class yet they will be marked as Not Present. However, if after the roll is marked a student arrives in the class the teacher can amend the roll to reflect this by using the Late status.

In schools which run a Compass Kiosk system a student may also be pre-selected as late in the roll if they have checked in as late on the Compass Kiosk or KioskLite.

Roll Marking Mode

Rolls will be set with specific roll marking modes - all these modes are listed below:

Intelligent

Students assumed Present, unless they’re elsewhere. Will be overridden by Arrivals, Departures, any other normal roll, or attendance note. More than one intelligent roll at the same time is not supported and will not recognise the 'correct' roll.

Normal Rolls

Students marked individually by teacher. When a Session has been configured with the “Normal” Roll Marking Mode, this will require a Staff Member (this does not necessarily need to be the timetabled Staff Member) to open and save the Roll, having marked the Students with the three states as appropriate. Rolls will include a timestamp of when the Roll was marked, including subsequent Roll Markings which will override earlier Roll Markings. Students can be pre-selected based on any other detected information.

No Roll / No Attendance

No effect on student attendance. This will mean that there is no roll to mark, and no attendance will be recorded for students for that session.

Roll Only

Students marked by teacher but will not be taken into account for attendance.

Roll Tap

Students assumed not present unless they tap their ID card. 

Staff Roles

The Compass system requires teachers to accurately mark their rolls based upon the three statuses available: Present, Not Present and Late. It is imperative that the Compass definitions of these three options are clearly understood and implemented school-wide.

At an activity level, a teacher is responsible for that activity's roll, whether that activity is a standard timetabled class, custom class or an Excursion.

The major difference between Compass and traditional roll marking systems is that the supervising teacher of an event is responsible for marking the events roll, rather than the traditional method in which the schools Attendance Officer would be responsible for this task.

The reason for this change is that the responsible teacher can see which students are in fact present, an Attendance Officer would not be accurately be able to ascertain students’ attendance.

Permissions

There are an array of functions and features covered in this article that will require certain permissions.  If you do not see one of the listed aspects it is likely you do not have the required permission level to access it. Please refer to the Permissions article from our Knowledge Base to ascertain which permission is required.

Attendance Management

Approvals are an integral part of the Attendance module within Compass. The requirement for an approval occurs when a student is not automatically accounted for through regular class scheduling, scheduled events or a custom class.

Approvals can be broken down into two main categories; Attendance Notes and School Activities. Each of these align with the attendance codes published by your local department of education.

Determining which kind of approval to use

Approvals within Compass are divided into two categories; School Activities and Note/Approvals.

• School Activities are entered when a student is not attending their scheduled class because of a school related activity. Examples of these include an Assembly, VET/TAFE Course or Meeting with a Coordinator or Counsellor.
• Attendance Notes are entered when a student is not attending their scheduled class for a reason determined by their parent or guardian. Examples of these include Medical or Dental reasons or a Family Holiday.

Custom Classes, Support/Literacy Classes and Excursions are managed separately in Compass and should not be managed using School Activities. For more information regarding these sections of Compass please refer to the articles on Custom Classes - Instrumental Music, and Events.

Attendance Notes

Attendance Notes are created when a parent provides written or verbal consent to the school for their student to be absent from class. Most commonly this occurs when the parent sends a note to the school office. A staff member will then be required to record this in Compass.

If the school has Parent Login in enabled within their Compass portal they can allow parents to lodge an Attendance Note directly into Compass via the parent portal. This can reduce the workload of the staff managing attendance and prevent double handling of information.

Please refer to the 'Attendance Notes' article from our Knowledge Base for further details.

School Activities

School Activities cover instances where a student, or students, will miss class because of a school related activity. Compass has a number of School Activity categories. Each of these categories aligns with attendance codes from your local department of education. Examples of approval categories include Meetings,Detention or Suspension.

School Activities use the Intelligent Roll functionality so students will be automatically marked Present in the session unless recorded elsewhere at the time in Compass.

For information on creating or editing School Activities, please refer to the 'School Activities' article from our Knowledge Base.

Arrivals and Departures

Students arriving at school late or leaving early should be 'Arrived' or 'Departed' within Compass. This process ensures that rolls contain data with regard to a student's whereabouts, attendance data is correct and in an Emergency, students can be accurately accounted for.

This process can be done through the Compass Kiosk, KioskLite or by staff at the school office.  For further information, please refer to the 'Arrivals & Departures' article from our Knowledge Base.

Attendance Consolidation

When early departures are detected, the attendance codes will automatically be recorded to reflect this.  Early departures that are approved will show as orange in the attendance summary, early departures that are unapproed will show as red.

     

     

Key aspects of the early departure calculation are as follows:

 - Early Departures do not have to be entered as Departures, but can be detected from Not Present in any further sessions for the rest of the day.
 - Any amount of early departure within the half day will count for that half day unless the 2 hour rule applies (see further below in this section for details).
- Early Departures that occur before or during a custom class or school activity will have a default attendance code of Present.
- Early Departures that occur when a student has no scheduled afternoon classes/school activity will default to a Present attendance code for the remainder of the school day after the departure.

Example 1: A student leaves part way through a session, it is consolidated as an Early Departure.

     

Example 2: When a student changes from Present to Not Present, an Early Departure is applied.

     

The 2 hour rule

Example: Where a student is Present for less than 2 hours in the PM session, it will be consolidated as a Not Present.

     

Please Note: Where a student only has a single session in the AM/PM, are marked as Present and the session total is under 2 hours, it will be consolidated as Present.

     

Likewise if a student has no scheduled sessions in the AM, and are Present for 100% of the scheduled sessions in the PM, even though,  the scheduled sessions in the PM total less than two hours, the student is considered Present.

     

Similarly, when there are no scheduled AM sessions and the student is not 100% Present for the scheduled PM session, they will be considered Not Present.

     

Attendance Page

The Attendance page within Compass is the primary screen used by attendance officers to enter attendance data into Compass and run the various attendance reports. It also includes a number of tabs which allow attendance officers to access overarching attending information from across the whole system.

To access this page, click on Attendance from under the Organisation menu (grid icon).

     

Attendance Page - Dashboard Tab

The first section of the Dashboard tab contains the various cohort profile pages.

Within Compass each Form Group and Year Level has a profile page which allows for detailed analysis of the attendance for these groups of students.

To access these pages click on the required Form Group or Year Level here on the Attendance page or search for the group's page in the main Compass search bar (i.e type 'Year 3' in the search bar). 

     

Profile Pages

You can use the options at the top to generate photo sheets, emails or form/year student lists.

     

You can use the series of filters to refine the data being viewed. 

Please Note: These pages require the system to generate a large amount of data. In some cases the report can take up to a minute to display.

     

There is also a series of tabs across the top giving access to different data sets for this cohort.

Please Note: Tabs available may vary depending on your permission level and modules used by the school.

For more information on attendance data on profile pages, please refer to. the 'Profile Page - Cohort Attendance Data' section further below in this article.

Example - Half Day Attendance Tab

     

 

Settings

To adjust some features of the Attendance data to suit your school, on the Dashboard tab you can click 'Settings'.  Please refer to the 'Attendance Settings' article for further details.

        

Reports and Exports

On the Dashboard tab there are a large number of reports that are designed to assist attendance officers in managing attendance at a school.

     


There are a number of reports that can be filtered by Home Group, Year Level or House.

Details of some of these reports are below:

Campus - Profile Pages

Attendance Page - Notes Tab

From the Notes Tab, staff can see a list of all Attendance Notes entered in Compass. These lists are sortable by the column headers.

     

Users can also enter approvals from this tab.

Please refer to the 'Attendance Notes' article for more information.

Attendance Page - School Activities Tab

From the School Activities Tab, staff can see a list of all School Activities entered in Compass. 

     

For more information please refer to the 'School Activities' article.

Attendance Page - Unexplained Tab

This tab shows all the current Not Present Unexplained absences within the school.  The top section is 'Unexplained By Day' which allows you to see which students where recorded with an unexplained absence for a specific day.  The lower section will show student records for a filtered date range.

     

You can adjust the data being viewed to be based on either of the following parameters:

All Unexplained - Will show any instance a student has been marked as 'Not Present Unexplained' or 'Late Unexplained' regardless of if they are listed on other overlapping rolls that have not yet been marked (i.e. a student is scheduled for Period 1 in both a class and an event; they attended the event and have been marked as NP in class but the event roll has not yet been marked; the NP Unexplained class roll would display here).

Unaccounted Only - Will show any instances where a student has been marked as 'Not Present Unexplained' or 'Late Unexplained' and all other overlapping rolls for that time have been marked (i.e. a student is scheduled for Period 1 in both a class and an event; they attended the event and have been marked as NP in class but the event roll has not yet been marked; the NP Unexplained class roll entry would not display here because the overlapping event roll has not yet been marked).

     

Any unexplained absences can be actioned from this tab.  An Attendance Note or School Activity can be added to explain the absence or the roll can be adjust to show a student as Present if an error has been made.

     

You can click the book icon for a student's listed Unexplained absence to view their attendance for that day.

Attendance Page - Unmarked Rolls Tab

     

     

     

     

     

Attendance Page - Suggested Changes Tab

This grid lists all of the roll change suggestions which have been generated in the system based on students that have registers with an Arrival/Departure.  This screen is only applicable for schools with the rolls set to Suggested.
From this screen attendance administrators can accept these suggestions.

     

When accepting a roll change suggestion Compass will record the user logged in as the last person to have marked the relevant roll, meaning this person is responsible for the accuracy of the attendance saved on this roll. In this case it may be more appropriate to contact the classroom teacher regarding this outstanding alerts and ask them to accept or decline the changes as required.

Attendance Page - Arrivals/Departure Tab

The Arrival/Departure tab displays a list of all of the Arrivals and Departures entered within Compass. You can use the filter options at the top to locate a specific entry or entry type as needed.

Attendance Page - Inconsistencies Tab

This tab shows an instances of inconsistent data for a student.  This can occur when they are marked Present in two locations at once.
Administration staff can use this tab to review any inconsistencies.

     

Clicking the book icon will show the details of the inconsistency.

     

When you have ascertained the issue, update the applicable details in the related roll (or rolls) to resolve the inconsistency.  Alternatively if you want to retain the student's attendance data as is, you can choose to dismiss the inconsistency by clicking 'Dismiss Inconsistency' in the bottom right corner of the details screen for the entry.  This will remove the entry from the Inconsistencies tab.

Example: This image shows that the student has been marked Present yet they have an Attendance Note in the system for the same time period.
If they have been accidentally marked Present, the rolls would need to be re-marked to show the student as NP to resolve the inconsistency.
     

If the rolls were correct and the student had returned earlier than anticipated from the holiday and attended school on that date, you may want to retain this information so you would click 'Dismiss Inconsistency' to remove the entry from the Inconsistencies tab.

You can select multiple inconsistencies and then select the 'Dismiss Inconsistency' button to bulk dismiss if required.   

Please Note: Entries that are dismissed from the inconsistencies tab will reappear on the tab if any attendance data is edited at a later date and there is still an inconsistency present.

Profile Page - Cohort Attendance Data

Clicking into a cohort Profile page will give a range of attendance data.

     

Click to the 'Attendance - By Students' tab.
          

This grid shows an overview of each student within the group. The data columns list the number of lessons or activities in each of the particular categories.

Within this data you can double-click on any square within the grid to drill-down into the data and see which instances the student was marked with a particular status. 

This is a drill-down list of the 3 instances that student Michelle Allen has the attendance status of ‘Not Present Unexplained’ in the example below.

The second set of columns shows the student’s percentages of attendance. 

The percentage columns have a visual alert system based on colouring which highlights low attendance. 

This grid can be filtered using the tools at the top of the page. This can be particularly useful when looking at data for larger groups of students, to identify individuals whose attendance is below a certain threshold.

The data can also be exported to CSV using the ‘Export’ button in the top right-hand corner of this screen.

Analysing Attendance by Student

Details regarding an individual student’s attendance can be found on the student’s profile within Compass. To view a student’s profile search for the student in the main Compass search bar.

If a school is using the Compass Chronicle module, an alert will be created on the student’s dashboard when a student has a large numbers of unexplained absences. This immediately alerts staff that there is an issue with the student’s attendance and prompts further investigation.

Common actions including adding both School and Note/Approvals can be added using the ‘Actions’ button from the dashboard of a student’s profile.

A student’s attendance records can be viewed from the ‘Attendance’ tab on the student’s profile.

The Summary tab within Attendance has three separate sections, Daily Activities & Attendance, Annual Half-Day Summary and Attendance Summary.

The Daily Activities & Attendance section lists all of the activities a student is scheduled to attend for a particular date and the student’s attendance status for the lesson. Clicking on the roll icon in the right hand column of the grid will display the roll for the class.

The Annual Half-Day Summary shows the student's attendance status by day across a series of months.

     

The Attendance Summary grid displays the same grid seen on the Form Group and Year Level profile pages. This grid shows a detailed analysis of the student’s attendance, broken down per class. The data can be filtered using the tools at top of the grid.

The same drill-down functionality is also available on this grid.

The Notes/Approvals tab on the student profile lists all of the School Activities and Note/Approvals that have been entered into Compass for the student. From this screen the approvals can be edited and deleted as required.

For more details regarding approvals within Compass please refer to the 'Note/Approvals' and 'School Activities' section of this article.

The Unexplained tab lists all of the instances where the student has been marked ‘Not Present’ or ‘Late’ and there is no approval or other activity in the system approving this absence.

The tools at the top of this grid can be used to bulk approve absences by using the tick boxes in the left hand column of the grid to select the instances that need approving and then clicking either the ‘Explain with Attendance Note’ or ‘Explain with School Activity’ Button. Using these functions will automatically insert the appropriate number of approvals for the selected sessions.

You can also use the ‘Re-mark selected as…’ button within this grid to re-mark the rolls for the instances listed and change the student’s attendance status in bulk. 

When using this functionality Compass will record the user logged in as the last person to have marked the relevant roll, meaning this person is responsible for the accuracy of the attendance saved on this roll. If a classroom teacher has marked a student incorrectly on a roll it may be better to contact the teacher and ask them to re-mark the roll to record the student’s attendance accurately.

The Arrival/Departure tab of the Student’s profile lists all of the times the student has checked in late or check out as an Departure. You can remove these check in/outs from this screen as well as adding a new check in.

For more information regarding Arrivals and Departures within Compass please refer to the Arrivals/Departures article from our Knowledge Base.

     

The Enrolments tab shows all classes the student has been enrolled in for the current academic year.  You can choose another year to view from the drop down.  For schools using a third-party timetable package, class enrolment data is imported and changes should be made within the timetabling program.  For schools using Schedule Builder, you can edit a student's class enrolment data from this tab however proceed with caution when adjusting dates or deleting enrolments as this will impact the student's attendance data.

     

The Full Record tab of the student profile lists every instance that a student has been enrolled to attend and their attendance status for the instance. You can click 'Generate Report' to export a file of this information.