§ 13 · Teaching & assessment

Attendance

Attendance is recorded against a timetable session, for the students on the official class list. Both of those come from elsewhere, which is why an attendance screen that will not open is almost never an attendance problem.

What it is for

Recording who attended each class, and reporting on it.

Who can do it

LecturerHODDeanRegistrar

Needed first

A published timetable session
A verified class list
Holidays configured for the term

Where it ends

Attendance percentages that examination eligibility rules can read.

How attendance hangs together

Published timetable session→ Official class list→ Register taken→ Attendance percentage

The Attendance screen with course and session selectors and the class register. — **Attendance** at **Academics**›Attendance, or from the lecturer portal's own Attendance item.

Pick the course and the session. Sessions come from the published timetable. If the list is empty, the timetable for that term is not published — see Timetable.
The register loads with the class list. These are the students with verified registrations, in the same order every week.
Mark each student. Present, absent, or excused, depending on how your institution has configured the statuses.
Save. The record is stamped with who took it and when.

Holidays

Terms have configured holidays. A session that falls on one should not be registered as a mass absence — check the term calendar before chasing a week of zero attendance. If holidays are not configured for the term, attendance percentages will read low for reasons that have nothing to do with students.

Why it matters downstream

Attendance is not kept for its own sake. Two things read it:

Examination eligibility. A student below the attendance threshold can be made ineligible to sit — see Examinations & results. That decision is only as fair as the registers behind it.
Teaching & attendance analytics. Reported at faculty and institutional level in Reports & analytics.

Take it weekly, not at the end

Because eligibility can turn on the percentage, a register reconstructed from memory in week twelve is a fairness problem, not an administrative one. Take it in the session, save it in the session.

Worked example

A lecturer's weekly routine

Before class	Lecturer portal → Class Lists — export the PDF if the room has no reliable internet
In class	Attendance → choose today's session → mark the register → save
A student not on the list	They are not registered. Note the name and send them to Registry the same day — do not mark them present into a gap
Missed taking it	Open the session later and complete it. It is stamped with the time you actually recorded it, which is the honest record
End of term	Check each course's attendance report before eligibility is computed, so disputes are settled before the examination, not after

If attendance will not work

Symptom	Cause	Fix
No sessions to choose	The timetable for this term is not published	Registry publishes it
The register is empty	No verified registrations for the course	Registry verifies the registrations
Saving fails with a validation message rather than moving on	The form was submitted with something the rules reject	Read the message on the page — it names the field. Do not resubmit unchanged
Attendance percentages look too low across a whole class	Holidays not configured, so non-teaching days count as sessions	Registry, in the term calendar
You cannot see another lecturer's register	Scope — you see your own assignments	The HOD sees the department's