Attendance Coding Changes

For the 2021/22 school year, the DfE has made some changes to its guidance on coding Covid absences. Here we’ll explain these changes and how they’re handled in Studybugs.

Sc and Is are no more (well, almost… )

“Isolation due to a case at school” (Studybugs code Sc) is no longer required.

“Isolation due to a case outside school” (Studybugs code Is) is also no longer a thing, except for students older than 18-and-a-half.

You can still use these codes in Studybugs (as you might be editing old registers) but a warning message now appears. We suggest that if a parent is keeping their child in isolation unnecessarily, you consider using code An (Covid anxiety). This is treated as unauthorised absence.

Outbreak Management – Ou

The DfE are clearly anticipating that local Directors of Public Health might need to introduce isolation measures as part of local “outbreak management”, as they have introduced a new statutory code for this. In Studybugs we’ve therefore added a new code Ou to handle this case. Hopefully you won’t need it, but in case you do, it’s there.

Statutory Codes

As ever, Studybugs codes map to the correct DfE codes automatically, so you don’t have to worry about this. This works even as the DfE codes change over time, our aim always being to keep things as simple as possible for you.

You can find full details of the Studybugs codes, and how we handle statutory coding, here.

Oh, and if you’d like to have your attendance officer (and any other staff) alerted when the new Covid codes – or the old ones – are used, just Ask a human and we’ll set this up for you.