Percentage Attendance in Discover is different to Attendance Reports

Percentage Attendance figures produced by a Discover Percentage Attendance Graph are different when compared with the figures produced by an Attendance / Lesson Monitor report.   This is due to the way that Discover calculates attendance figures as an average, therefore the data will not always match.

The differences are because the Discover graphs and the Attendance / Lesson Monitor Reports are designed to calculate different things. The Discover graphs show an average of Attendance whereas most Attendance / Lesson Monitor Reports will calculate an actual Percentage attendance for the group using Attendance marks against Possible Attendances.

As an example, the Whole School Attendance Graph shows an average of all the included students’ attendance percentage figures (‘Average whole school attendance’), whereas the Group Session Summary report works out the percentage for the group using a calculation of (Count of Present Marks / Count of Possible Attendances) x 100 and not the average. Because we’re looking at different outputs, one average figure and one percentage calculation for a group, we would expect the figures to be different.  As such in this instance there will not be a way for us to correct any differences in pupil totals and it will simply be that Discover is taking an average of student totals across the time period whereas the reports in SIMS are taking a snapshot of the exact on roll numbers on the specified date.

Reviewed 31/7/20