Items covered here: School Calendar, Days Attended, School Days, Weekend School Days, Days Earned.
HomeSchool Easy Records, version 2, was designed to make attendance tracking easy for you if you regularly hold school on Monday through Friday. For example, you are not required to enter a check mark for every day a student is in school. To make this work, some important assumptions are made.
NOTE: Attendance tracking in HER version 3 will be improved and simplified, and allow for much more flexibility in the way you schedule school.
Program Assumptions
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It is assumed that school is normally held on Monday through Friday and that weekends are not school days. It is also assumed that a student has been in school on every weekday WITHIN the defined school year (see Basic Setup) up to the current date, except for non-attendance days. Days of non-attendance are vacations, breaks, and absences entered into the School Year Calendar.
Attendance
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Student attendance is tracked in two ways -- "Days Atteneded" and "Days Earned". Days Attended is a count of whole days that a student has been in school and is the traditional method of attendance tracking. Days Earned is a special calculation, visible only on one screen within the program.
Days Attended
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For each student, the Days Attended calculation, which appears on Progress Reports and Report Cards, is a sum of the assumed days of attendance minus any recorded non-school and absence days in the School Year Calendar.
Weekend days are never included in Days Attended unless you use the Weekend School Days screen (more on this below).
Days Earned
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Days Earned, which appears only on the School Calendar screen, is a summation of all time earned by a student as recorded in the Lessons screen -- converted into equivalent days according to the Hours per Day that you entered in the Basic Setup screen.
Weekend School
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If a student attends school on Saturday or Sunday, each such day must be entered into the Weekend School Days screen that you get to from the Lessons screen. If this is not done, the Days Attended number will be "short". The Days Earned will still be correct, however.
If weekend school days fall within a no-school period in the School Year Calendar, they will still be counted toward Days Attended.
Weekend school days should not be entered into the School Year Calendar, but if you do, it won't actually hurt anything.
NOTE: The red-letter message in the Weekend School Days screen is INCORRECT! Entering weekend dates in the School Year Calendar and checking them as "School Days" will NOT add the days into the Days Attended number. You must use the Weekend School Days screen.
School Days in the Calendar
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School Calendar date ranges that are NOT checked as "School Day(s)" are excluded from the Days Attended calculation. These are things such as vacations, breaks, and holidays. If weekend days are included within such no-school date ranges, that's fine.
Weekend days within School Calendar date ranges are NEVER included in Days Attended even if the "School Day(s)" box is checked. You must use the Weekend School Days screen to include weekend days in the Days Attended calculation.
Weekdays as Regular No-School Days
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If you regularly do NOT have school on a weekday (Monday through Friday), you will have to enter each such day with an entry in the School Year Calendar with the "School Day(s)" box un-checked. Flexible school day scheduling will be much easier in HER version 3.
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