Roll call and late students

gaiscioch

How are other schools dealing with students who arrive in late? In our school the tutor takes the roll, and if a student arrives after that time they must go to the year head for a late stamp, and teachers must ask for that late stamp if the student was marked absent for the previous class(es) or roll.

When everybody does their part, it works. Unfortunately, this rarely happens in practice and it's not unusual for a student to just attend the next class, where the roll will probably not be called at start of class or, if it is, the teacher overlooks the earlier absence. The fact that the tutor in first class far too often doesn't actually take the roll (what with a variety of end-of-year school activities/absences at this time of year) doesn't help the situation at all.

Has any school got a more foolproof way of getting the students who arrive late?

mtoutlemonde

gaiscioch wrote: »

How are other schools dealing with students who arrive in late? In our school the tutor takes the roll, and if a student arrives after that time they must go to the year head for a late stamp, and teachers must ask for that late stamp if the student was marked absent for the previous class(es) or roll.

When everybody does their part, it works. Unfortunately, this rarely happens in practice and it's not unusual for a student to just attend the next class, where the roll will probably not be called at start of class or, if it is, the teacher overlooks the earlier absence. The fact that the tutor in first class far too often doesn't actually take the roll (what with a variety of end-of-year school activities/absences at this time of year) doesn't help the situation at all.

Has any school got a more foolproof way of getting the students who arrive late?

We take roll call at the start of every class. If a student arrives late, it will be changed by secretary and we can see that the student arrived late because the AM column will change from 'Absent' to "Late'.

Postgrad10

Another related matter of a system I don't understand, students give their note to their year head in the morning if leaving during the day, they arrive up to their subject teacher at the specific time and say I'm away now I've an appointment , nothing to show the teacher( just take their word for it?) , no notice on vsware and no message from the yearhead. Is this commonplace ? In my day, we got our note in the journal signed by the dep principal or principal in the morning and we at least had the note/ evidence for the class we were leaving. And then the office knew we had permission when we were signing out!

evolving_doors

Postgrad10 wrote: »

Another related matter of a system I don't understand, students give their note to their year head in the morning if leaving during the day, they arrive up to their subject teacher at the specific time and say I'm away now I've an appointment , nothing to show the teacher( just take their word for it?) , no notice on vsware and no message from the yearhead. Is this commonplace ? In my day, we got our note in the journal signed by the dep principal or principal in the morning and we at least had the note/ evidence for the class we were leaving. And then the office knew we had permission when we were signing out!

Parents sign note in journal in advance of leaving. Year head / tutor / Deputy Principal signs off on it.
I think giving a note away is just creating paperwork and hassle.
In saying all that if a student tells you in class that they have to leave you'd take their word for it as you know they have to sign out at reception and they are marked absent on VsWare, so they'll be caught out either way if they are going on the doss.

As regards the roll call, it's a student welfare issue. If students know teachers are lax in taking the roll they know they can slip out, these days with self harm, bullying etc it could fall back on the person who didn't take the roll and couldn't remember if a student was in last Friday at 9:45! We have to take the roll for every class. Doesn't mean I never forget to do it though.