As a Year Head or Attendance Officer, you can use Unique Schools to monitor attendance, follow up with parents/guardians and manage student notes. The tasks you are responsible for depend on your school’s arrangements.
Choose the task you need
- Monitor attendance, approve leave notes and send attendance alerts
- Send messages and respond to parent notes
- Manage detention
- Collect information and consent using forms
Missing access? See Request Year Head or Attendance access.
Monitor and manage attendance
Year Heads usually follow up on unexplained absences for their assigned year. In some schools, an Attendance Officer or a member of Senior Management handles this instead.
Check absences and lates
Use the Attendance Dashboard to:
- View absences and lates
- Search, filter and manage attendance notes
- Check current attendance information across the school, subject to your access
View the Attendance Overview guide
Approve Permission to Leave notes
Depending on your school’s policy, Permission to Leave (PTL) notes may be approved by Year Heads, Attendance Officers or office staff.
Approval is required before sign-out. A student cannot sign out until their Permission to Leave note has been approved.
How to approve Permission to Leave notes
Send attendance alerts
Your school may send attendance alerts at absence milestones such as 5, 10, 15 or 20 days. Follow your school’s process for when these notices should be sent.
- Use the Dashboard to identify students who have reached the relevant absence milestone.
- Send the relevant notice to their parents/guardians using bulk Personal Notifications.
Communicate with parents and guardians
Send Personal Notifications
Use Personal Notifications instead of email for attendance messages, behaviour alerts and general updates to parents/guardians.
You can send a message to:
- An individual parent/guardian from the student’s profile
- A class or year group
- A custom group
Want parents to reply? Enable replies before sending the message. Replies stay together in one conversation, which you can close once the matter is resolved.
How to send a Personal Notification
Check Note from Parent submissions
Parents can use Note from Parent for messages that are not about attendance, such as:
- PE exemptions
- Uniform issues
- Minor medical updates
- General queries
Check these notes regularly and acknowledge or respond to them as needed.
View the Note from Parent guide
Manage detention
If detention is part of your role, you can:
- Create detention sessions and add students
- Take the roll to record who attended
- Automatically notify parents through bulk Personal Notifications
- Move students who were absent to the next detention date
Collect information and consent
Use Unique Schools Forms for:
- Parental consent
- Policy acknowledgements
- Surveys and questionnaires
Using Forms keeps communication in the school app, so parents can respond in the same place they receive other school updates.
Request Year Head or Attendance access
If you already have the access you need, you can skip this section.
If you need Year Head or Attendance permissions, ask a member of Senior Management to email staffsupport@uniqueschools.ie to request access on your behalf.
Need help?
Email staffsupport@uniqueschools.ie with your question.