Spotting Patterns, Taking Action: How Attendance Concerns Help Schools Intervene Early

Attendance is more than just tracking who’s in class. It’s often the first sign of a deeper issue–whether that’s disengagement, well-being concerns, or a breakdown in communication.

But spotting these trends manually is time-consuming, and without a structured follow-up, at-risk students can slip through the cracks.

That’s why we’ve introduced Attendance Concerns

Attendance Concerns is a new Orah Attendance feature that flags repeated attendance issues to designated staff or faculty. Your school can setup Attendance Concerns based on your specific Attendance policies. Attendance Concerns function as a centralized task list that the assigned staff member or team manages to Review, Action & Close. Schools can now set automated attendance rules (like repeated tardiness or unexcused absences) that trigger alerts & new concerns for staff, ensuring no pattern goes unnoticed. This means that you could alert a Year-Level Dean if a student in their grade is late to class 3 times in a row within a month, which would open up a new Attendance Concern for them to triage and action.

Proactively Addressing Tardies & Unexecused Absences

Traditionally, attendance and behavior monitoring have existed in silos. Teachers and staff might notice patterns, but without real-time alerts and a clear process for intervention, students often receive reactive rather than proactive support.

For example, imagine these scenarios:

• A student is late three times in a week. Is it a transport issue, or are they struggling with motivation?
• Unexcused absences start adding up for a particular class. Is there an underlying social or academic challenge?
• A boarding student fails to check in repeatedly. Are they experiencing well-being concerns that require immediate attention?

With Attendance Concerns, these patterns automatically trigger alerts, ensuring staff can intervene early–before small issues become big problems.

Customize to fit your Attendance Policies

Independent schools can customize Attendance Concerns to fit their attendance policies and specific needs, creating a proactive tailored system for student support.

Here are a few ways schools can use Attendance Concerns effectively:

✅ Identify at-risk students: Set thresholds for unexcused absences or repeated tardiness to flag potential disengagement.
✅ Improve communication with parents: Automate notifications when attendance patterns suggest concern.
✅ Strengthen boarding oversight: Ensure students are accounted for and safely where they need to be.
✅ Connect attendance with student care: Combine attendance insights with mood check-ins and behavior notes for a full-picture approach to student well-being.

With Attendance Concerns, independent schools have a smarter, automated way to connect attendance with student support.

New Attendance Concerns Page

• The new  ‘Attendance Concerns’ page lists all triggered alerts as concerns.
• It includes filters, sorting options, and a search bar for easy navigation.
• Concerns are grouped by tabs based on their status.

Concern Status

• There are three statuses to choose from
  • Concern Opened (default status)
  • Action Needed
  • Concern Closed
• Authorised staff can manually update the status of a triggered alert
• When a concern status changes, staff members with access to the alert will receive an email notification, keeping everyone informed

Comments & History

• Staff can collaborate by tagging colleagues in the comments section to discuss concerns
• The history tab documents concern status changes including the staff member, date, and status update

Note: To streamline alerts and concerns, all past and future alerts will now be categorised as 'Concern Opened' on the new page by default.

This update moves us closer to a complete attendance management lifecycle—from roll call to alerts to resolution—making the process smoother, more transparent, and more effective for student success.

Read more about how Attendance Concerns works in the Orah Help Center.

Want to try Orah Attendance at your school?

Get a demo to see how it could work at your school.

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