To send attendance messages for today's unexplained absences-
Click on Today's unexplained absences in Attendance contact, any ‘N’ marks showing in SIMS for that day will be displayed.
There will be an option to contact by Text, Email or Other (the parent will need to have a valid mobile number/email address in Schoolcomms in order for the Text/Email tick boxes to appear).
‘Other’ is used when you need to record that you have had contact with the parent, for example the parent may have phoned the school or left a voicemail to explain the absence. Clicking on the box will take you through to the following screen:
If there are brackets around ‘AM’ or ‘PM’ or both this means that there was an N mark for that session at some point that day but it has since been explained (and so is no longer an N). There will therefore be no option to contact them, so no Text or Email tick boxes.
To send messages to follow up historic absences which remain unexplained-
In attendance contact click on Follow up contact.
To see historic unexplained absences, specify the date range at the top of the screen and then click on ‘Show’. You can then send a message in the same way as you would with today’s absences.
N.B Attendance messages are sent to the Prime parents