The register
Know who is in school, and tell the family
Homeroom teachers mark from a phone in under a minute, or a card reader at the gate does it automatically. Absences reach guardians by SMS the same morning.
Attendance that survives an Ethiopian school day
Attendance fails for practical reasons: the register is a paper book that one teacher carries, the network drops mid-morning, and by the time a family hears their child skipped school, a week has passed. A system that only works on a good connection with a full battery is not an attendance system for Ethiopia.
Temari marks attendance from whatever phone the teacher already has, and keeps working when the connection dies. The marks queue on the phone and send themselves when the network returns. Schools that add card readers at the gate get the record written automatically as students tap in, before the first bell.
The point of all of it is the same-day SMS. A guardian who hears about an absence the same morning can act on it; a guardian who hears at report-card time cannot. Every absence message goes out in the language the guardian chose, and the same event is never texted twice.
capabilities
One-minute marking
The homeroom list defaults everyone to present. The teacher only touches the exceptions, from any phone, even offline.
Tap-in ID cards
Students tap their ID at the gate and the record writes itself. A teacher's manual mark always wins over the machine.
Same-day guardian SMS
An absence sends one clear message to the guardian, in their language, and never sent twice for the same event.
Reports that catch patterns
Chronic absence and perfect attendance surface automatically, per section, per grade or per branch.
How a morning works
- 1
Students arrive
With card readers, each tap at the gate writes the record instantly. Without them, the homeroom teacher opens today's list, where everyone starts as present.
- 2
The teacher touches only the exceptions
Absent, late or excused: a few taps and the register is done, usually in under a minute, online or offline.
- 3
Families hear the same morning
Each absence sends one clear SMS to the guardian in their language. A parent can reply with an excuse from the family portal.
- 4
Patterns surface on their own
Chronic absence, perfect attendance and per-section rates appear in reports the director sees without asking anyone to compile them.
Built to keep working when the network does not
Most attendance apps treat a lost connection as an error state; in Ethiopia it is Tuesday. Temari's register is built the other way around: the class list is already on the teacher's phone before the network is needed, marks save locally the instant they are tapped, and a queue on the device pushes them to the server whenever connectivity returns, the same morning or that evening.
The page never disappears mid-work. If the network dies while a homeroom teacher is halfway through the register, the register stays exactly where it was, keeps accepting marks, and shows honestly that it is holding them for sync. Nothing is more corrosive to adoption than an app that eats ten minutes of work; Temari's offline layer exists so that never happens.
Because attendance and marks are the two things a school cannot afford to lose to a bad connection, both ride a durable outbox: a queued save survives closing the app, restarting the phone, and days without signal. When it finally lands, it lands once, because the server treats a replayed save as a harmless repeat rather than a second record.
The same-day SMS: policy, language and cost
An absence alert is only useful the same morning, so the pipeline is built around speed with restraint. When a student is marked absent, either by the teacher or by the gate reader's cut-off, one SMS goes to the guardian in the language that guardian chose. The same event never texts twice, and corrections (a late arrival re-marked present) do not fire a second confusing message.
Schools control the policy: whether lateness alerts send, when the gate cut-off falls, and which events deserve a text at all. SMS costs real money and parental attention is finite, so Temari reserves it for events a family must act on, and folds repeats into a single message. A guardian who reads their SMS knows it matters, and that is the entire value of the channel.
For families with smartphones, the app carries the fuller picture: the week's register, term summaries per child, and the excuse flow. A parent can submit an absence reason with a note, and the homeroom teacher accepts or queries it from the same screen.
From daily roll call to early-warning system
Marking attendance is the input; the output is the pattern. Temari's reports compute attendance rates per student, section, grade and branch over any window, and flag the two ends that matter. Chronic absentees are the students quietly sliding toward dropout; perfect attendance is worth reading out at assembly.
Chronic absence is the single strongest early predictor of a student failing or leaving school, and it is invisible in a paper register because no one adds up forty exercise books weekly. The dashboard does that arithmetic continuously, so a director sees "12 students below 80% this month" as a list of names with guardians' phone numbers one tap away, while there is still a semester left to intervene.
Attendance also feeds the report card: a student's absence days per term are counted from the register automatically, per student rather than per section, so a mid-year section change never distorts the number printed on the card.
Also in this module
- Employee attendance with leave and holiday overlays
- Absence excuses submitted by parents from the family portal
- Period-level attendance for secondary schools
- Works through network drops and syncs when back online
Common questions
Does attendance work without internet?
Yes. The register loads on the teacher's phone, marks are saved locally when the connection drops, and everything syncs when the network comes back. Losing signal never loses the marks.
Do parents get an SMS every single day?
No. Guardians are told when something needs them: an absence, or a late arrival if the school enables it. Repeats of the same event are folded into one message, because SMS should mean something when it arrives.
What if the card reader records something wrong?
A teacher's manual mark always wins over the machine. The reader clears the morning queue; the homeroom teacher stays the authority on who was actually in class.
Can secondary schools take attendance per period?
Yes. Schools can mark per period against the published timetable, so subject teachers record their own lessons and skipping one class no longer hides behind morning roll call.
How do parents submit an excuse for an absence?
From the family portal: the parent picks the day, writes the reason and can attach a note. The homeroom teacher sees it against the register and accepts or queries it. There are no torn-notebook letters, and the record keeps both sides.
Does staff attendance work the same way?
Yes. Employee attendance runs on the same registers and the same gate readers, with approved leave and public holidays overlaid automatically, so a teacher on annual leave is never marked absent and HR reads one honest sheet.
Can the director see attendance across all branches?
Yes. School leadership sees rates and today's picture per branch, per grade and per section from one school-wide view, without switching accounts or phoning each campus for numbers.
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