Reports: Frequent Absence Rules & Report

Frequent Absences: Ministry of Education Definition

A child’s attendance must match their enrolment agreement for at least half (i.e. 50 per cent or more) of each calendar month.

Parents or Guardians may not notify services when their child’s attendance will be changing, or attendance patterns may evolve over time, which may result in a breach of the Frequent Absence stipulation.

The Frequent Absence Rule must be applied in these three situations:

1. When a child is absent on the same enrolled day or days of the week for more than half of these days in a calendar month or
2. When a child attends for fewer days per week than they are enrolled to attend, in more than half of the weeks in a calendar month or
3. When a child attends fewer hours than they are enrolled to attend, on a daily basis, on more than half of their enrolled days in a calendar month. This does not apply to sessional services.

If the family is at risk of breaching these rules, a change in the Enrolment Agreement may be needed. The Frequent Absence Report helps services identify absence patterns to identify an enrolments that need to be updated. 

By keeping enrolment agreements up-to-date, services can ensure that their funding is calculated accurately.

Ministry Guidance for Breaches

Please note: 'Absence Pattern' referred to below, refers to a child attending less than 50% of booked sessions/hours per calendar month.

• The Ministry will fund the enrolled hours of absent children up to certain limits.
• If a child has an absence pattern for 1 month, make a note of it. As long as they have not been absent for more than 3 weeks in a row, you will still be able to claim funding.
• If a child's absence pattern continues for a second month then you must reconfirm the child's enrolment agreement with their parent/guardian to be able to claim funding for the child's absences.
• If a child's absence pattern continues for a third month then you must again reconfirm the child's enrolment agreement with their parent/guardian to be able to claim funding for the child's absences. You should also change their enrolment at the end of the third month, because in the fourth month of the same pattern, the funding will stop.
• Funding for absences in the fourth month can not be claimed. You must have changed the child's enrolment agreement at the end of the third month to match the child's actual attendance

For more information, please see the MOE website.

Frequent Absence Report

The Frequent Absent report can be located by navigating to Children Reports > Frequent Absences. This report provides a view into the attendance (or absence) behaviour of children over time to assist you in evaluating your MOE funding around the Frequent Absence Rule (FAR).

Select the month you would like to view attendances and any other filters you may need (please note, it is recommended you set the Grace period filter to match the grace period set in your centre settings), then click 'Get Report'

Understanding the Report

Each child's name will appear on the left, with their attendance status outlined each day of the month. Hovering over each date will provide further information about the child's attendance pattern.
A child's name will be highlighted in yellow if they are at risk of losing funding, and red if they have had funding stopped.
The three columns to the right of the child's name indicate which absence rules have been broken (if any), and how many months these have been broken for.

If you need further information regarding the pattern of absences for a child, click on the 'Show More' button at the top of the report. This will display the attendance pattern over several months.

The legend displayed below can also be viewed by clicking on the blue 'Explanation' drop down at the top of the report:

	Weekend or Centre Holiday
	Not Enrolled
a	Absent
ah	Absent on holiday
?	No record
ae	Absent with exemption
a	A warning for any absence types where child is starting to break rules
a	Funding stopped or limited for any reason
	Attendance
x	Attended less hours than enrolled hours (x = number of hours the child attended. e.g. 3)
a1	The child is absent on the same day(s) of the week for more than half of the those days this month
a2	The child attends for fewer days of the week then they are actually enrolled for, in more than half of the weeks this month
3	The child attends for fewer hours per days than they are enrolled to attend on more than half of their enrolled days this month

Child Name Key:

(#)	number of months the child has broken one of the three rules in a row
	funding for this child has been stopped for some days/times, as they have broken 1 or more rules
#	number of hours the child is not eligible for funding in the current month

Important Notes

• Discover automatically limits funding based on whether your children are breaking enrolment rules including frequent absences. In Discover, you do not need to manually apply any funding overrides or similar actions.
• If funding is limited due to frequent absence, it is shown as red on this report per the key. You can also view your centre funding report and drill into particular days to see where, if anywhere, Discover limits funding.
• It is not possible to correctly calculate a particular absence if you have missing attendance data, eg. a? records
• If a child is enrolled for more than 6 hours they will never show up as breaking rule 3 (less hours). The MOE fund up to 6 hours, so anything above 6 does not affect the MOE.
• You must not claim funding for children who have left the service.
• From this report, you can email the Primary Parent/Guardians of all children listed in the report with an attestation form to be completed by clicking 'Email Attestations To Parents' at the topi. You can also click the print button beside specific children to print off an Attestation form. 

Exemptions 

Children with special needs or health problems may be absent more frequently. Services may apply for an exemption to the Frequent Absence Rule for these children.

Navigate to the Health tab in the Child Profile. Under Absence Exemptions, select 'Add New', add in the dates from and to, and a comment if needed.
EC12/13 forms can be uploaded in the Notes tab in the child profile for future reference.

Once an exemption has been created in the Health tab, the report can be refreshed to view the updated absence information.