Pupil Asset: How to set up and take a Free Breakfast Club register

Pupil Asset

Overview

If your school runs a government-funded Free Breakfast Club, Pupil Asset lets you set up a register to record daily attendance for pupils from Reception to Year 6. This article explains how to turn on the register, take it each day, and, if you want to, let parents request bookings through the Parent Portal.

Running a Free Breakfast Club is optional. If your school does not offer the provision, you do not need to set this up.

Free Breakfast Club attendance feeds into the School Census. You can either enter a headcount directly as part of the census, or use this register to build up attendance data over time.

Prerequisites

  1. You must have admin-level access to enable and configure the Free Breakfast Club register.
  2. Your school must offer a government-funded breakfast club provision for reception to year 6 pupils.

Enable the Free Breakfast Club Register

Follow these steps to enable the Free Breakfast Club Register:

  1. Go to Admin / School Options / School Information.

  2. Check the DfE- funded Breakfast Club checkbox and select Save features:

  3. Go to Admin / School Options / MIS Options.

  4. Under DfE-funded Breakfast Club settings, check the Enable Registers checkbox and select Save:

    Default times (Default Start Time and Default End Time) are for communication purposes, they are not required for Census, but they will appear in the Parent Portal if parent features are enabled. It's a good idea to set up default session times before you make any changes to the calendar. After a session is saved, viewed, or interacted with by a parent, its times are fixed and will not update if you later change the default times.

Access the Breakfast Club Calendar and update sessions

Follow these steps to open the Free Breakfast Club Calendar and update sessions:

  1. Go to Admin / School Options / Breakfast Club Calendar to view and manage sessions:

    The calendar uses the term dates and closures set up in your Calendar Setup to work out when a session is available. By default, every available session is Open. The calendar is grouped by Census Data Collection Periods, not necessarily by school term.

  2. Select a day to open it's Edit Breakfast Club Session from which you can quick-edit a session's status or times. The date and time appear at the top of the form for reference. Time is initially populated from your MIS Options settings:

    1. Change the Session status as required. 

      If you change a session's status from Open to Partially Closed or Fully Closed, you must enter a reason. Pupil Asset uses this reason to work out the default attendance code for pupils in that session.

      For Fully Closed sessions, the Free Breakfast Club sessions for that day will be disabled, preventing registers from being taken. 

      For Partially closed sessions, pupils with missing marks will be marked with the attendance reason for the closure.


       

    2. Select View Session to open the Breakfast Club Session page from which you can edit the session:

      You can also access today's session from Pupils / Breakfast Club:

  3. The Breakfast Club Session page contains:
    1. The session summary, with an Edit Session button, which when selected lets you change the Session's status and times without leaving the page.
    2. Filters to select which pupils to record attendance for. If the register is the only Breakfast Club feature enabled, filters only let you select by group or class.
    3. An explanation of how Pupil Asset handles pupils who are not marked.
    4. The register itself.

Filter the register

If the only Breakfast Club feature enabled is the Register, filters only let you select pupils by group or class. Groups and classes cannot be selected at the same time.

The filter uses multi-select fields, so you can select multiple classes or multiple groups using Shift or Ctrl or Cmd.

Take the register

You can record attendance as present, absent, or default:

  1. To mark a pupil present, select ✔.
  2. To mark a pupil absent, select the ✘.
  3. To reset a mark to default, select the same button again.

Hover over a button to see what it means. 

Attendance is saved automatically.

If a pupil has a food allergy recorded, it appears in the pupil's notes on the register.

When you print the register, only the pupils you have selected are included. Any recorded attendance is circled on the printed copy.

Enable booking

Follow these steps to enable Free Breakfast Club place bookings:

  1. Go to Admin / School Options / MIS Options.
  2. Check the Enable Booking checkbox.
  3. Select Save MIS options.

This option is only available once you have checked Enable Registers.

Book a pupil

New options appear in the register when a booking is enabled. To book a pupil, select Book:

You can also add a note to the booking. Select Note: 

The note appears on the current session only. 

If the pupil has a food allergy recorded, the note appears underneath it.

When booked, a Cancel Booking button appears so you can cancel it again.

View booked pupils

A Show All Booked option appears in the filters. Check this to see every pupil who has been booked:

Allow parents to request bookings

Follow these steps to allow parents to request bookings through the Parent Portal:

  1. Go to Admin / School Options / MIS Options.

  2. Check the Allow parents to request bookings via the Parent Portal checkbox:

  3. Select Save MIS options.

This option is only available after you have checked Enable Booking.

For communication purposes, set your session times correctly before you enable this feature.

Once enabled, a Breakfast Club menu item appears in the Parent Portal for parents of pupils in reception to year 6. Parents can select any month in the academic year to see the available sessions.

Each day in the calendar shows differently, depending on the date and the booking request status. For example, a day may show as closed, already booked, not booked, or waiting for the school to approve or decline a request. Future open sessions show the session times set by the school.

Partially closed sessions appear as open to parents in the Parent Portal, even though staff see them as partially closed in the staff calendar.

Parents can request or cancel a booking, but cannot make a booking directly. It is always the school's decision whether a pupil is booked.

Manage booking requests

When this feature is enabled, you can load a list of all pupils with booking requests:

  1. Select Approve to book the pupil automatically and send a confirmation email to the parent.
  2. Select Decline to stop further interactions with that request in the Parent Portal.

You can still book a pupil manually after declining their booking request.

Allow parents to leave notes on bookings

To allow parents to add a note on a booking request:

  1. Go to Admin / School Options / MIS Options.

  2. Check the Allow parents to enter notes when making a booking request. checkbox:

  3. Select Save MIS options.

This option is only available once you have checked Allow parents to request bookings via the Parent Portal (see above).

When enabled, parents can add a note to their booking request. The note appears in the register for that day. 

The parent-facing form warns parents not to enter long-term dietary or medical information in this note.

Tips and best practices

  1. Set default session times before you make changes to the calendar, because session times are fixed once a session is saved, viewed, or interacted with by a parent.
  2. Set session times correctly before enabling parent booking requests, since parents see these times in the Parent Portal.

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