Arrival context and late-arrival tracking

What is arrival context?

Arrival context is an optional note attached to a Present or Late attendance record that describes how and in what state a child arrived. Common arrival contexts include:

• Arrived by school bus
• Dropped off by parent / guardian
• Walked in independently
• Arrived upset / distressed
• Arrived with a note from parent
• Arrived with medication to be administered

Arrival context is not mandatory, but it is useful for safeguarding and for giving you context if a child's behaviour during the morning is unusual.

Recording arrival context

1. On the attendance screen, after marking a student as Present or Late, click the context icon (speech bubble) next to their name.
2. Select an arrival context from the dropdown, or type a free-text note.
3. Click Save Context. The icon turns green to indicate a note has been added.

Recording the reason for a late arrival

1. Mark the student as Late on the attendance screen.
2. Two additional fields appear: Arrival Time and Late Reason.
3. Enter the time the student arrived (e.g. 09:42).
4. Select or type a late reason: Traffic, Medical Appointment, Oversleeping, Bus Delay, No Reason Given, Other.
5. Click Save. The late reason is stored with the attendance record and appears in attendance analytics.

The late-arrival threshold

Your school admin sets a late-arrival threshold in Settings → Attendance Statuses (e.g. school starts at 8:00 AM, threshold is 15 minutes). If a child arrives before 8:15, they are Present. After 8:15, they are automatically suggested as Late in the attendance screen.

You can override this, if a child arrives at 8:20 but there was a school-wide traffic disruption and you do not want to mark them Late, you can mark them Present with an arrival context note instead.

How persistent late arrivals are flagged

School Vault automatically flags students whose late-arrival rate exceeds the threshold set in Settings → Attendance Statuses (default: 3 late arrivals in a rolling 30-day period).

• Flagged students appear in the Attendance → Reports & Analytics tab under the Needs Intervention section, with their late-arrival count and pattern.
• The class teacher and school admin both receive an in-app notification when a student is added to the intervention list.
• The flag clears automatically if the student has no late arrivals for the following 30 days.

Common mistakes

• Marking a student Late when the whole class arrived late due to a lockdown or school event, use a bulk attendance entry with a custom status instead.
• Not entering the arrival time for late students, without arrival time, the late-arrival analytics cannot calculate how late the student actually was, making the data less useful.
• Using the arrival context field for safeguarding incidents instead of the incident report, arrival context is an informal note; safeguarding concerns need a formal incident record.