How to manage Absence Notifications from MCAS

Schools have the option to allow parents to notify them of a child’s future absence through MyChildAtSchool.

Access: The permission required to use the Absence Notifications page is found in the MCAS Module of Config > Setup > Roles And Permissions.

This guide will cover:

How to enable parents to notify the school of their child’s future absence (school)
How to notify the school of a child’s future absence on the desktop site (parent)
How to notify the school of a child’s future absence in the App (parent)
How to manage Absence Notifications (school)
How to review the outcome of an Absence Notification (parent)
Absence Notification bell in Bromcom

1. How to enable parents to notify the school of their child’s future absence (SCHOOL):

When a contact reports a child’s absence via MCAS, the confirmation message will be available in Messages within the MCAS parent portal.

Schools can choose whether a confirmation email is sent or not, helping manage email volume and messaging credits.

Go to Config > MCAS > Attendance.

In the Absence Notification via MCAS top right panel tick the check box Allow Parents to Notify of Absence via MCAS? in the Attendance Code Type Settings panel.

Note : It will be unticked for all schools by default.

When ticked, parents will be able to Report an Absence in MCAS.
When unticked (default), the Report an Absence button will be hidden in MCAS.

How It Works

The email option is unticked by default.
It can only be enabled if ‘Allow Parents to Notify of Absence via MCAS?‘ is ticked.
When enabled, a confirmation email is sent to the contact.
When disabled, no email is sent, but the confirmation message is still available in Messages within MCAS.

Send ‘Absence notification report received’ email, allows schools to control whether a confirmation email is sent.

New Absence Notifications via MCAS panel

2. How to notify the school of a child’s future absence in the desktop site(PARENT):

Parents will go to MyChildAtSchool > Dashboard > Attendance.

With the Allow Parents to Notify of Absence via MCAS checkbox ticked – Parents will click on the Report an Absence button.

This button is also visible in the MCAS > Attendance screen.

After clicking on the Report an Absence button – parents can enter details of the absence (for whole days only) and then press Send to notify the school.

Student: Parents can select one or more students.
Date From: Parents will be able to select today’s date or a date in the future.
Date To: Defaults to the Date From. Parents will be able to select today’s date or a date in the future.
Time : Parents can tick this box if the Absence spans only part of a day to enter the start and end times for the absence.
- Time From : Enter the Start Time of the absence
- Time To: Enter the End Time of the absence
Message: Parents will provide details of the absence.
Attachments: Parents can attach multiple files up to 20MB each (PDF, JPG, Word, Excel, and XML) .
Close: No action will be carried out and parent will return to the previous page.
Send: Will send the Absence Notification to the school.

After selecting Send, a Confirmation popup will appear. Click Proceed.

A success message will appear:

The parent will receive a confirmation email when the Absence Notification has been sent successfully.

IMPORTANT: Please note, currently if a parent replies to the confirmation email, these replies will NOT be received or recorded anywhere in the MIS or MCAS.

Note: After selecting Proceed, the following alert will appear only if:

An Absence Notification is in progress or has been approved for that student for that period:

Or, if an Absence Notification is in progress or has been approved for one or more students when selecting multiple students for that period, the following message will appear:

3. How to notify the school of a child’s future absence in the App (PARENT)

To notify the school of a child’s absence within the MCAS App, Parents should select Attendance from the dashboard.

Then, select Report an Absence at the top of the screen.

On the next screen they will need to fill out all required information, any field with an asterisk (*) is mandatory.

Student – Parents can select one student, or multiple students who attend the same school.
Date From – Use the calendar icon to select the Start Date of the absence, this will default to today.
Date To – Select the End Date of the absence, this will default to the Date From but parents can select a future date.
Time – If the absence is for only part of a day, parents can tick this box to enable the Time from and Time to fields to be edited:
- Time From – Select the Start Time of the absence
- Time To – Select the End Time of the absence
Message – Enter a description of the reason for the absence.
Attachment – You can use this to upload documentation relating to the absence, press Add Attachments to select documents from your files.

Once the information is correct, scroll to the bottom and click Send.

The following confirmation message will be displayed, click Confirm to continue or Cancel to return to the Absence Notification form to make changes.

When a parent submits an absence notification via the MCAS Parent App, it will appear in the Absence Notifications page of the school MIS just as with Absence Notifications submitted through the desktop site.

4. How to manage Absence Notifications (SCHOOL):

Go to Modules > MyChildAtSchool > Administration > Absences Notifications.

Back in the school MIS, once a parent has sent an Absence Notification via MCAS it will be visible in the Absence Notifications page.

Columns in the Manage Absence Notifications table display the following:

Received Date: Date/Time the Absence Notification was received by the school.
Student Name: If the notification is for more than one student they will appear on individual lines.
Contact: Student Contact that raised the Absence Notification.
Date From: Date From on the Absence Notification, today’s date or a date in the future.
Date To: Date To on the Absence Notification.
Reason: Message on the Absence Notification. The first 100 characters will be displayed in the table. Users can hover over the Reason to view the full message on this page.
Status: Status begins with Awaiting Review and users can either Approve or Reject the request.
- Awaiting Review – This will be the default status until the Absence Notification has been either Approved or Rejected.
- Approved: School has Accepted the absence and the parent has been notified in MCAS > Inbox.
- Rejected: School has Rejected the absence and the parent has been notified in MCAS > Inbox
February 2026 : Attendance Mark Comment *column has been added to the Manage Absence Notifications table, where comments are shown as read-only and can be viewed in full via a tooltip. Note: Year Group and Tutor Group columns have also been added to the Manage Absence Notifications table.
Attendance: This will display the student’s attendance % for the Academic Year to date as shown in the Attendance Dashboard.
Actions: Attachment icon: Click on the icon to view any attachments uploaded by the parent in the Absence Notification. In here, school users can also upload, download or delete attachments.

Attendance Mark Comment*

Attendance Mark Comments will appear in all registers where comments are allowed.

Lastly, the Reason for Absence field is now read-only for absence notifications with a status of Awaiting Review, meaning the contact’s submitted reason cannot be changed.

Users can Export data from the table as a Copy, Excel file or CSV file. Users can select one or more students individually, or use select all then Export As.

From this page, you can review Absence Notifications with a status Awaiting Review.

Double click on the individual notifications, where you can:

Accept an Absence Notification
Reject an Absence Notification
Resubmit an Absence Notification
View Impacted Periods

Accept an Absence Notification:
- Clicking Accept prompts the the user to assign an authorised Attendance Code from the dropdown and Confirm.
- A Confirmation popup will ask “Are you sure wish to accept the Absence Notification?”. Clicking Proceed updates the Status to Approved.
- The authorised Attendance Code will be assigned to the student in the Modules > Attendance > Manage Attendance screen.
- Parents will then receive a message in MCAS > Inbox notifying them of the approval.

Reject an Absence Notification
- After clicking Reject, a Confirmation popup will ask “Are you sure you wish to reject this Absence Notification?’. Clicking Proceed updates the Status to Rejected.
- Parents will receive a message in MCAS > Inbox notifying them of the rejection.

Resubmit an Absence Notification
- Rejected Absence Notifications will display the Resubmit icon in the Actions column.
- Clicking on the Resubmit icon creates a copy of the Absence Notification in the table, with the same data, in Awaiting Review status. This will enable users to review an appeal made by the parent without the need for the parent to send a new Absence Notification.