Introducing Reasons-Based Attendance

Every school has dealt with this: you pull a report on student absences, and instead of clean data, you get "Sick", "Ill", "Unwell", "Home sick", "Flu" – all describing the same thing. Good luck spotting patterns in that mess.

That's why we built Reasons – a way to standardize the "why" behind every absence, late arrival, or early departure in Orah.

Instead of everyone on your team interpreting and recording things differently, Reasons gives you a shared vocabulary. Define your categories once (Illness, Family, Transport, Medical Appointments, etc.), and suddenly every roll check, every pastoral note, and every boarding sign-out speaks the same language.

Faster workflows, cleaner data, and earlier problem detection

Staff save time. When marking a student absent, staff see a dropdown of relevant, pre-configured reasons instead of typing in free text. No more guessing what to write. No more inconsistency between how the boarding team and the day team record the same situation.

Your data gets cleaner. Over time, you're building a dataset you can actually trust. That means better reports, clearer trends, and fewer hours spent cleaning up messy records before a board meeting or audit.

You spot problems earlier. When your data is structured, you can ask better questions. Are transport issues spiking in a particular year group? Are wellbeing-related absences clustering around exam periods? These patterns are invisible when your data is all over the place.

Families get clearer communication. When your internal language is consistent, what you tell families becomes consistent too. No more confusion about why the same situation gets described three different ways across notifications, parent portals, and follow-up emails.

Create your own attendance categories and use them across Orah

Reasons is a school-defined catalogue. You create the categories that match your policies and workflows – whether that's attendance codes for regulatory reporting, pastoral care categories, or boarding-specific reasons for sign-outs and permissions.

Once set up, staff can attach these standardized reasons across Orah. And because it's structured data, you can filter by it, report on it, and build workflows around it.

It's the difference between knowing a student was absent, and knowing they were absent due to a medical appointment versus a family emergency versus transport issues. Context matters.

Better compliance reporting and easier staff onboarding

Schools are under pressure to show they're proactive about student wellbeing and safety. Regulators, boards, and families all expect you to spot warning signs early and respond with care.

Standardized reasons help you do that. They're the foundation for everything from basic compliance reporting to sophisticated wellbeing models. You're not just tracking activity – you're capturing context that helps you make better decisions about student support.

And as your team grows or changes, new staff inherit a system that already has the right language built in. They don't need to guess how to record things. It's already there.

Join us for a live webinar on March 4th

Want to see this in action? We're running a live session with our Customer Success team on Wednesday, March 4 2026 at 3pm ET.

If you're already using Orah: This is your chance to ask questions about migration, see best practices from other schools, and get hands-on support. Register for the webinar here.

If you're exploring Orah: Come see how structured attendance data can change the way you support students. Get a demo.