Classes, students and attendance

In the academy, everything revolves around the class: it holds the schedule, the coach and the age group. A student is enrolled in a class, not loosely in the academy.

Creating a class

Enter:

• Name — “U11 Morning”, “Beginners Tue/Thu”
• Age group — used to validate the student’s age at enrolment
• Days of the week and time
• Maximum students — the class’s capacity
• Coach in charge

Setting the maximum from the start avoids the awkward conversation of discovering the class is full after the enrolment went through.

A class linked to a team

A class can be linked to a team. That’s what connects development work to competition: the students in that class become the squad of the team playing tournaments.

Without that link, academy and competition end up as two parallel records of the same child.

Enrolling a student

Each student has a name, date of birth, sex, enrolment date and a guardian.

The guardian isn’t a text field: it’s a record of its own, with contact details for whoever is responsible for the student. One guardian covers several students — siblings sit under the same record, and billing and communication go through it.

Tip Date of birth is what validates the class’s age group and, later, the category in a tournament. Filling it in at enrolment saves hunting for documents mid-season.

Attendance

Attendance is recorded per session. It’s the data that underpins two difficult conversations:

• With parents — “he missed six of the last eight sessions” is different from “he’s been missing a lot”.
• About drop-out — a fall in attendance usually comes before the enrolment is cancelled. Whoever watches attendance has a chance to act before losing the student.

Technical assessment

Beyond attendance, you can record technical assessments of the student over time.

In an academy charging monthly fees, this is what shows the guardian that development work is actually happening — and not just an hour with a ball each week.

Suspending a class

A class can be suspended temporarily: holidays, court repairs, a spell without a coach.

Suspending is different from deleting. The class, the students and the history remain; what stops is the routine of sessions.

Frequently asked

Can a student be in two classes? Enrolment is into one class. To train at two times, register the student in the main class and use the others as extra sessions, according to how you run things.

What happens when a class fills up? The maximum exists so you know when to open a new class.

Does billing come from the class? No. The monthly fee configuration belongs to the academy — see Academy monthly fees.