We are building a new feature called Period Zero Attendance, or Daily-Equivalent Attendance. What this essentially means is that QuickSchools will track and report a daily attendance equivalent, based on period or subject-based attendance. This will be an optional feature for schools that track period or subject-based attendance.

How does it work?

Schools will continue to take attendance by period or subject. However, for every school day, each student will be marked with an equivalent daily attendance. So for example, if a student is marked present for 5 out of 7 periods, QuickSchools will convert this to a daily equivalent, based on certain rules. As a result, the student may be marked Present, Absent, Tardy or Half Day Present for the day. 

This daily attendance will be stored in Period Zero (hence the name “Period Zero Attendance”). When reporting attendance, the system will use / display the Daily Attendance by default. And the period / subject attendance is merely recorded for tracking / informational purposes only.

How will the Daily-Equivalent be calculated?

By default, the QuickSchools will use the FIRST attendance record as the Daily Attendance. This means that if a student is absent for the first period, but present for the remaining periods, the student will be marked as Absent by default. An administrator can then change the Daily Attendance to Present or Half Day Present based on rules set by the school.

Later on, we will provide different default calculation methods. Some possible options we are considering:

• Use the LAST period: Regardless of what attendance is taken earlier, whatever attendance was taken last, this will be used as the Daily Equivalent. So for example, if the student was marked present on the last period, even if the student was absent for most of the day, the student will still be marked as Present by default.
• Use the FIRST and LAST period: Regardless of the number of periods that have been defined for the day, the system will aggregate the attendance for the FIRST and LAST periods for the day. In this scenario, it’s possible for a student to be Half Day Present, if the student was present for only ONE of the first and last periods.
• Custom Calculation: In the near future, it should be possible for schools to customize the default calculation via a Java Snippet (similar to custom calculations for GPA in Report Cards and Transcripts). This feature will require a customization fee.

It’s important to reiterate that regardless of the default calculation method, a school administrator can always manually change the Daily Attendance for a student, for any particular day.

How do I enable Daily-Equivalent?

This feature can be enabled under Attendance Settings, and is simply a check box:

How do I view / adjust the Attendance record?

With this setting enabled, the Attendance Calendar on the student record will ALWAYS show daily attendance:

However, when you click on an attendance day, you can view / edit the attendance for all periods, including the daily equivalent:

Timeline for Improvements

The base version will only support the first calculation method, where the equivalent daily attendance will be based on the first attendance record for the day. This feature will likely be completed before schools start in August / September.

The remaining improvements (i.e. the additional calculation methods) will be rolled out later this year, based on feedback from schools. If you’re interested in this feature, definitely please reach out to our support team.