Printable attendance sheet

A monthly attendance grid for a class, club or tutoring group, with totals per student and a short code legend printed at the bottom.

How to make your sheet

Set the number of students.
Edit the day columns to match how often the group meets, or type real dates.
Pick A4 or Letter; choose landscape for more than about 25 columns.
Press Print or save as PDF and mark each session with the legend codes.

How the sheet is laid out

Rows are people and columns are sessions. The default has 20 numbered day columns, which covers a school month of about four weeks of weekdays, followed by Present and Absent totals. The legend under the grid prints the codes you use, P for present, A for absent, T for tardy and E for excused, so anyone who picks up the sheet, such as a substitute, reads it the same way you do. Write the dates in the small header cells when you start the month, or rename the columns to real dates in the Columns box before printing.

Choosing the number of columns

For a class that meets every weekday, 20 to 23 columns is one month. For a class that meets twice a week, 8 or 9 columns is a month and 16 to 18 covers a whole quarter on one sheet. For a weekly club, 12 to 15 columns can cover a full term. Remember that every extra column makes each cell narrower; past about 25 columns, switch to landscape. The Columns box accepts any labels, so you can also type session names such as “Week 1 Tue, Week 1 Thu”.

Totals and attendance rate

At the end of the month, count each student's P marks into Present and A marks into Absent. Decide in advance how tardies and excused absences count, because policies differ: some schools count a tardy as present, some count three tardies as one absence, and many keep excused absences out of the rate. The attendance rate is present sessions divided by sessions held. A student present 17 times out of 20 has an 85% rate; missing one session a week across a four-day week already means 75%. If attendance is part of a participation grade, that rate can go straight into your gradebook or into the points calculator.

Practical tips

Take attendance at the same point in every session so tardies are judged consistently.
Use a pen, not a pencil; attendance is sometimes a record you may need to show later.
Leave two blank rows at the bottom for students who join during the month.
Keep each finished month in a folder in date order rather than writing over an old sheet.

An official record?

This sheet is a working copy. Many schools require attendance to be entered in their own student information system, and the paper version does not replace that. For clubs, tutoring, sports practice, Sunday school or a homeschool co-op, though, a printed sheet is often all you need. The GPA calculator and the other calculators on this site are there when grades, rather than attendance, are the question.

Marking quickly

List students in seating order rather than alphabetically if the seats are fixed; you can then take attendance by looking at the room instead of calling every name. For a group that changes every session, alphabetical by family name is easier to scan. Mark only the exceptions during the session, A or T, and fill the P marks afterwards, which keeps the start of class short.