Lessons · Teaching · attendance and the minutes lost
Attendance, and the minutes that are gone
Attendance is a percentage of sessions present, and the version of it that is useful to a teacher is the number of teaching minutes a learner has lost.
Hone is a place to practise a career, one idea a day. This is one of its lessons, written out in full and free to read without an account.
What it is for
Ninety percent attendance sounds fine, and it is one day in ten. Across a year that is eighteen days, and in one subject it is a whole unit, which is how somebody at ninety percent can be a year behind in one subject and level in everything else.
How to think about it
Turn the percentage into days, then turn the days into minutes of the subject that matters. A number in minutes is the one that makes a plan; a number in percent is the one that ends a conversation.
Worked example
Present 162 of 180 daysThe count, before any percentage.
162 / 180 × 100 = 90%The number everybody quotes.
180 - 162 = 18 days missedThe number that means something.
18 days × 50 min of maths = 900 min, which is 15 hoursFifteen hours of one subject. That is the sentence for the meeting.
Your turn
A learner misses 12 days and each day carries 45 minutes of science. Write the line that gives the minutes lost.
12 × 45 = min
Solve one, graded on the server
The trap
Treating attendance as a behaviour number. It is a teaching-time number, and the plan that comes out of it is about what was missed rather than about who was absent.