Classes & Education
Answers on running a weekend school, madrasah or academy in Muin — setting up your timetable, enrolling families, taking attendance, collecting tuition, and paying your teachers.
53 questions
What do I need to set up before I can create a class?
Two things, and they live outside the program because you reuse them across every program: **Classrooms**: added at **Platform → Locations**. A class without a room still works; it just carries no room on the timetable, and room-based reports have nothing to count. **Teachers**: added at **People**. A *paid* teacher needs an employee record; a *volunteer* teacher needs a volunteer role. Muin checks this when you assign them to a class, not when you add them. Muin shows these two as a one-time card at the top of your program screens, and it disappears for good once both lists have something in them.
What order do I set up a school year in?
Muin walks you through it and keeps a running "Setup N of 3" strip on your program screens, so you never have to remember the order. The shape is: 1. **The program**: create it with its term dates and tuition. 2. **The timetable**: your levels, curriculum and groups (if you teach in levels), then your classes, when each one meets, and who teaches it. 3. **Your students**: import or enroll them, then place them into classes. 4. **Families**: publish, write what families will read, and open enrollment. The steps you see depend on your school: a program that does not teach in levels never shows the levels, curriculum or groups steps at all. Stage 4 is optional: plenty of schools enroll everyone themselves and never open a public form.
Our program has no year groups. Do we still have to set up levels?
No. Levels are optional, and Muin is built for programs that do not have them. A tutoring or memorization program progresses per student, not in school years, so it has no ladder at all: its groups simply have no level, and the levels, curriculum and groups steps never appear in its setup. A group with **no level is also perfectly normal in a program that does have levels**: it means the group spans several, which is what a school does when a year is small. "Grade 1 + Grade 2 Boys" is one group covering two levels, and Muin treats that as a real answer rather than missing data. What a level is *for*: it lets a child move up a rung at year end, and it powers the level-and-group attendance cuts.
Can one class meet more than once a week?
Yes. A class holds as many meeting times as it needs: Tuesday 5pm *and* Saturday 10am is one class, not two. Add each meeting time to the same class and Muin creates every session for the whole term from it. Each meeting time can carry its **own room** and its **own teacher for that weekday**, which is how a class taught by two people on two days works. Leaving a meeting time's teacher blank means the class's teacher of record takes that day. Muin refuses a meeting time that genuinely clashes with another on the same class: same weekday, overlapping time, overlapping dates. Times that only *look* similar, like a Ramadan timetable that starts after the regular one ends, are allowed, because each meeting time can have its own start and end dates.
I published the schedule: why can't families see it?
Because those are two separate steps, on purpose. **Publish** puts a class's sessions on your **staff** calendar. That is what the Publish step in setup does, and it is all it does. **Show on public calendar** is a per-class toggle in the program console's Classes list. That is what puts the sessions on the public calendar families actually look at. The split lets you build and check a whole timetable internally before a single family sees it. Turning a class off the public calendar later takes its sessions off that calendar only: staff keep seeing them and nothing is cancelled.
Our term dates moved. What happens to the classes?
Edit the term on the program and Muin shows you a **preview before it writes anything**, splitting your classes into two lists: - **Classes that move**: these still match the old term, so nobody has chosen their dates and they follow the program. - **Classes someone gave their own dates**: these are left alone unless you explicitly tick to include them. A class that was deliberately set to end early stays that way. You can also change only the program and cascade to nothing. One thing to check afterwards: if you **extended** the term, look at the affected classes' meeting times and extend the schedule so the new weeks actually have sessions. Moving the term dates changes the dates; it does not by itself create sessions for weeks that were never scheduled.
How do I mark a holiday or a day the school is closed?
Open the program's console, go to **Settings**, and find **Days off** right under Term dates. Add a date, or a first and last day for a break, and a reason such as "Eid al-Fitr". That is the whole job. Every class session on those days is cancelled with that reason, and so is any event that follows the program's calendar, like a volunteer pizza run on school days. Attendance stops counting closed days, so nobody is marked absent for a holiday. Remove the day off later and everything comes back exactly as it was. Enter your holidays whenever you like: a class or an event you add afterwards already knows the days it does not meet. Closing every program at once, for Eid or a building closure, is one entry at the organization level rather than one per program; a program page shows those as read-only.
How do families sign their children up?
Two ways, and most schools use both: **Your registration form.** Every program can have its own public form: you build it from the program's Registration tab and share the link. A family fills it in, picks how they want to pay, and the child lands on your roster. **You add them.** Your office can enroll a child directly from the program, which is what you will do for a family that phones in or walks up. Either way the child ends up in the same place, so a roster is never split across two systems. What the family reads afterwards, the confirmation, the thank-you message, how to pay in person, is yours to edit.
What is the difference between enrolling a student and placing them in a class?
**Enrolled** means the child is in the program: they have a place at your school and, if you charge, they are being billed. **Placed** means the child has been put into the actual classes they attend, which is what gives them a register, a room and a teacher. A child can be enrolled and not yet placed, and at the start of term most of them are. The **Class enrollment** screen exists for exactly this: it shows the queue of children still waiting for a class beside the classes they could go into. If your program uses groups, placing a child into a **group** puts them into every class that group attends in one action, rather than one class at a time.
A family wrote a grade on the form that doesn't match our levels. What happens?
Nothing breaks, and the family is never turned away. Muin keeps exactly what they typed, in their words, and flags the child for you. This matters because families answer that question in their own vocabulary: their child's state-school grade, a level from another masjid, or something only they use. Refusing the form over it would lose you the enrollment. You resolve it later on the **Class enrollment** screen, which lists every child whose reported grade matched no level, or matched more than one. Placing the child is the resolution: the original answer stays on their record either way.
What can a parent see about their own child?
Families get their own portal, reached by a link rather than a password. For each of their children it shows: - the classes they are in, and when those classes next meet - how their attendance is tracking - where they stand on tuition, including installments paid so far, the next one due, and a statement they can download - a plain-language history of changes you made to their child's place - the daily or weekly sheets a teacher has published for them, with a Sign button - the term dates you publish (exams, breaks, seminars and parent-teacher meetings), which they can add to a phone - your family handbook, to read and sign, and what is still outstanding on their enrollment - where their child stands against your pass rules, if you set any Parents can also **report an absence**, **ask for an early pickup or for another adult to collect**, **book a parent-teacher meeting time**, and **ask to change class** from there. Each arrives with you as a request rather than as a change. Tuition is shown per household, not per child, because that is how a family with three children actually pays.
What are our options for taking attendance?
Pick whichever matches how your school actually runs: you are not locked into one: - **The teacher marks the register** on the web, from My Teaching, or on their phone in the Muin app. - **The coordinator's live board** shows a class in progress and lets the office mark or correct anyone. - **Card tap.** Children can carry an NFC card; a tap at the door checks a child into their first session of the day. - **Kiosk or QR check-in** at the classroom. Whichever surface is used, who is scanning decides what happens: a **student's** scan marks attendance, a **teacher's** scan clocks them in for pay. That is one rule, applied everywhere, so a teacher can never accidentally be marked "present" as a pupil.
We pay teachers but don't track student attendance. Can we turn it off?
Yes, and it is a real setting rather than a screen you ignore. Set the program's student attendance to **not recorded** and the student roster, its screens and every student-attendance number are *absent* rather than sitting there empty. The attendance reports that only make sense for students disappear from your reports too. Teacher hours are completely unaffected: they are recorded exactly as before and still reach payroll. You can set this per program, or set your organization's default once in HR settings and let each program inherit it. A school that records attendance for its Sunday school but not for its adult classes is one setting per program away.
Should we take one register a day, or one per class?
Both are supported, and it is a setting rather than a workaround. **One register per class** is the default: every class has its own teacher and its own marks. A child attending four classes is marked four times. **One register a day** suits a school where a year group stays together all morning: the group is marked once, and the subject timetable is used to report which lesson they were in. You choose which period owns the register; by default it is the earliest one of the day. You can set this for the whole program and override it on a single class that runs differently.
How do we handle someone telling us in advance they'll be away?
Absences reported ahead of time are recorded as excused before the session, so a child or teacher who told you is never counted the same as one who simply did not turn up. - **A parent** reports their child's absence from the family portal, or from your own absence link, a page you can put on a noticeboard or in a text message, where a parent verifies with a code sent to the email or phone you hold for them. - **A teacher** reports their own from their classes. - **Your office** reports one for a teacher who phoned in, and can take it back if plans change. **You can set a same-day cutoff**, a number of minutes after the class starts, after which a report no longer excuses the absence. A late report is still filed and still reaches the teacher, and the parent is told plainly that the absence is recorded as unexcused. There is no cutoff unless you set one. If you track them, reaching your monthly allowance of unexcused absences emails the parent a warning, and going past it can open a discipline record. Both are off until you turn them on. The Absences report shows both sides: who gave notice, and who missed a session **without** notice. The second list is the one worth reading, and an absence already missed cannot be taken back, only the future ones can. For a teacher's absence you can also name cover from the same place.
A teacher got a new phone and now can't clock in. What do we do?
Reset her device binding. An admin does it from the **By teacher** hours report: open her row and reset the registered devices, with a short reason. This happens because of a security setting some schools turn on, which ties a teacher's clock-in to the specific phone she registered. Replacing a phone, or just reinstalling the app, which clears the stored device identity, leaves her locked out of her own time clock until someone resets it. Once reset, the next device she clocks in from becomes the registered one.
What is a teacher of record, and how is that different from cover?
The **teacher of record** is the person the class belongs to for the term. Assign one per class from the program console. A class can have more than one teacher; one of them is the teacher of record. **Cover** is for one session. Naming someone to cover a single occurrence adds them to that session only: it never changes who the class belongs to, and the regular teacher keeps the class. Both route their hours correctly without you doing anything: a paid teacher's time goes to payroll, a volunteer's goes to volunteer hours. Once someone has actually clocked hours against a session you cannot un-assign them from it: the hours worked are real.
How do teaching hours get to payroll?
When a class session is ended from the live board. That close-out clocks out everyone still clocked in, works out the hours, and submits them. Two details worth knowing: - Hours are clocked out to the class's **scheduled end time**, so a teacher who forgets to clock out is not paid until midnight. - Closing out early never invents hours that have not happened yet: the clock-out is capped at the current time. You can read the result two ways: **By teacher** shows hours given, paid and volunteer, and needs payroll access. **Teacher attendance** shows who was due, who taught, who was late, who was away and who covered, whether each teacher took student attendance in the classes they taught, and which teachers have never signed in, and needs no payroll access at all, so a coordinator can check staffing without seeing pay.
Where do I get a report of each teacher's clock-in and clock-out times for the month?
Two places, depending on whether you want totals or every punch. - **Totals per teacher:** **HR → Reports**. The **Hours by employee** tab shows how many hours each teacher worked, and the **Teacher salary** tab shows sessions worked, hours, tardiness and pay per teacher. The **Downloads** tab exports them to CSV. - **Every clock-in and clock-out:** **HR → Time & Leave → Time Tracking**. The **Entries** tab lists each entry with its **Clock In** and **Clock Out** time. Both need HR or payroll access. To see who turned up to teach without seeing anyone's pay, use the **Teacher attendance** report on the program instead.
How do I register (enroll) a new student?
Open **Nonprofit → Education → Education Programs**, open the program, go to the **Participants** tab and press **Enroll student**. Use this for a family that phones in or walks up. Families can also register themselves through the program's own registration form, which you build and share from the program's **Registration** tab. Either way the child lands on the same roster. Next, place them in a group so they appear on their classes' registers.
How do we set up tuition for a program?
Choose **one** of two ways to price it, and do not mix them: - **A rate per period**: for example $75 a month, charged on your billing day for as long as the term runs. - **A total split into installments**: for example $715 across 8 payments, a committed figure that does not depend on the term's length. Pick the one that matches what you published to families. A school that entered its yearly total *and* a monthly rate once billed families ten times what it had advertised, so Muin now refuses that combination outright. You can also set a registration fee, a late fee, a grace period so a family enrolling right at the start is not charged twice, and which payment frequencies a family may choose for themselves.
How does the sibling discount work?
You set one percentage on the program, and it comes off **every child after the first** in the same family. It is flat, not stepped: with a 20% sibling discount the second, third and fourth child each get 20%, the fourth does not get a deeper cut. It applies the same way whichever pricing you chose: off the period rate, or off the committed total before that total is split into installments. There is one place in Muin that works this out, so the figure a family is quoted, the figure they are charged, and the figure your reports show cannot drift apart.
Some families pay by check at the office. Can we still use the registration form?
Yes. Each program decides which payment rails its form offers: - **Card only**: the default. - **Card or pay at the office**: the family chooses. Choosing the office enrolls the child immediately, marked as awaiting payment, with no card taken. - **Office only**: no card option at all. A family who chose the office shows up on your tuition screens as collected by the office rather than on a card, so you can see at a glance which balances someone has to chase and which will simply be charged. When the money arrives, record it from **Families & tuition** (Record a payment) or from **Tuition owed** (Record payment): choose check, cash, money order or Zelle, enter the amount and the check number if there is one, and the family leaves the chase list. One check covers the whole household; Muin splits it across siblings for you. **Payment history** on the same row shows every payment so far and lets you download a statement for the family.
What's the difference between 'Families & tuition' and 'Tuition owed'?
They answer two different questions for two different people. **Families & tuition** sits on one program. It answers *"where does each family in this program stand?"*: what they have paid, what they still owe, and which class each of their children is in. It is the screen to open with a parent on the phone. **Tuition owed** covers your whole organization, every program at once, biggest balance first and aged by how long it has been outstanding. It answers *"who owes us money?"*: the weekly read for whoever chases payments, and it separates balances the office must collect from ones that will be charged to a card automatically.
What does a family receive when we record a check or cash payment?
The same acknowledgement a card payment gets: a payment receipt with a receipt number, emailed to the payer and to every guardian on file with an email address (one email per address, even when two children share it). It names the amount, how it was paid, the check number if there was one, what the family still owes and, on an installment plan, how many installments are paid. You can see that it went out in three places: **Sent to this family** on Families & tuition, the receipt state (**Sent**, **Generated** or **Failed**) on the transaction and on its contribution, and the Email Activity Log. If nobody in the family has an email address, the record screen says so and nothing is sent; add an address to a guardian, then press **Resend to guardians** on the contribution or the transaction. Tuition is never a tax receipt. A tuition contribution shows **Not required (tuition)** under tax receipt, and the family gets a payment receipt instead.
Does Muin remind families who still owe tuition?
Yes, for programs that let families pay at the office. A **Tuition Balance Reminder** goes out a week after enrollment and then every two weeks until the family's balance reaches zero. It names the amount still owed and how to pay, and it stops on its own the moment the balance is settled, so there is nothing to switch off per family. It is on by default only for programs that collect at the office; card-only programs never send it. To turn it off for your whole organization, go to **Settings → Communication & AI → Customer Emails → Education → Tuition Balance Reminder**. While it is off, **Tuition owed** shows how many families are waiting on a reminder that was withheld, so an unpaid balance is never silent.
What attendance reports does a school get?
Reports sit at the level the question belongs to, and every one exports to CSV. **On one class:** the register for a single session, how the class is holding up session by session, and who changed a register and when. **On a program:** by class, by classroom, by student, by day, by level and group, which subjects were actually taught against the ones you say you teach, and which of a class's meeting times were really covered. **Across the school:** which programs are slipping, which children are falling behind everywhere, and the monthly **Tardiness** list of students absent or late too often. Reports that show pay-bearing hours need payroll access; the staffing view of the same data does not, so a coordinator can check who turned up without seeing anyone's pay.
What's the difference between 'Start next term' and advancing the year?
Two different jobs that are easy to confuse, and most schools do both. **Start next term** copies the program itself, its classes, their schedules, their teachers, its tuition and its registration form, onto new dates, as a draft. **Nobody is enrolled.** Last year's students, attendance and sessions are deliberately left behind, because a new term starts empty and families register for it themselves. **Advancing the year** moves *children* up: each group goes to the next level and its students are placed into the next term's classes. A group sitting at your final level graduates instead. Both show you exactly what they will do before they do it. A group that spans two levels is not moved automatically: its children move up individually, because Muin cannot know which of them go where.
How do I ask families to sign up for something?
From the program, not from a separate tool: **Program → Participants → Message participants → Families → Attach a form.** Pick the form (or build one on the spot), write the message, and send. Muin tracks who has responded and who has not, so you can chase only the families still outstanding. Families see it in two places: the message itself, and a **"Things to sign up for"** section in their family portal, where a parent can sign up a child rather than themselves.
Can a teacher keep a daily sheet that the parent signs?
Yes. You build the sheet once as a form (a memorization record, a weekly goal sheet, a behavior note, a monthly report), and it becomes a tab on every class in that program. **The teacher** opens the class, picks the day, and fills one row per student. Counters add up as they type, so a mistake count becomes a score without anyone doing arithmetic. It works on a phone, and it saves offline and sends when the signal comes back. **One sheet per student per period.** Saving again the same day edits that day's record rather than opening a second one, so a correction never doubles the history. **Nothing reaches a family until the teacher sends it.** A saved sheet is a draft; publishing is what tells the parent, and it tells them once. The email names the child and carries a link; the sheet itself stays behind sign-in. **The parent signs with one button** and can add a reply the teacher reads. A sheet edited after they signed says so. You can require the signature, and you can hold further recording after a set number of unsigned days so the gap is visible rather than quietly growing. Teachers see who has not signed on the class itself. Staff alerts for a run of failed sheets, a sheet unsigned too long, or a child present with no sheet are all available and all off until you turn them on.
Can we record behavior incidents with levels, and can a parent appeal?
Yes, on the class's own Discipline tab, and the level is worked out rather than typed. The teacher picks the category and writes what happened. Muin counts the child's earlier records in that same category inside the term and letters this one from the ladder you configured, so two staff cannot disagree about whether this is a second or a third offense. The ladder is capped: a fourth offense on a three-rung ladder stays at the top rung rather than inventing a consequence your handbook does not have. Only published records count, and only days earlier than this one, so correcting a record cannot raise its own level, and a record filed late cannot re-letter one a parent already signed. **The parent is written to from the level you choose**, usually the second. A first offense is recorded without emailing anybody. **Appeals are built in.** The parent gets an Appeal button on the same card for the number of school days you allow, counted from when the record was published, and your program's closures do not eat the window. The appeal lands in your office's queue as an approval and is deliberately not assigned to the teacher who wrote the record. A device policy works the same way, with one addition: a held item is released only to an adult on the child's own list, recorded by name, and a second release is refused naming who already took it.
Can we weight the grade by attendance, exams and participation, the way our handbook says?
Yes. The categories and their weights are set once per program, so every class in it is graded the same way, and each assessment's own weight still applies inside its category. Four kinds of category: - **Assessments**: the marks you already enter. - **Attendance**: present counts 1, late counts half, an unexcused absence counts 0, and an unmarked register counts neither way. Lateness is the same lateness the register already works out, so the two cannot disagree. You can forgive the first N excused absences of the term: they drop out of the total rather than counting as zero. - **Participation**: a seminar, retreat or other dated event can carry marks. Class sessions are excluded, because attendance already grades those. - **Progress sheets**: a published sheet's own score rolls up. Nothing is re-scored, so changing the points tomorrow cannot restate a sheet a parent already signed. **A program with no categories keeps exactly the average it had before.** This is opt-in; the number does not move until you add one. **Pass rules** sit on the same card: an overall promotion mark, a required mark on the subjects you flag, and a minimum attendance percentage. Each child then reads as on track, at risk, or not enough evidence; a rule nobody has fed yet is undecided, never failed. The parent sees the same standing the teacher does. A graduation checklist is also per program: a position reached on a sheet, a final sheet passed, and approved service hours. An empty checklist is never complete.
Can we publish term dates to families and let them book a parent-teacher meeting?
Yes, both from the program's settings. **Term dates** come in four kinds: exam, break, seminar and parent-teacher meeting. The list is fixed on purpose: a school typing "Exams" on one date and "exam week" on the next would end up with two categories and a parent filter that misses half the term. Families read the dates on their child's page, with filter chips only for the kinds you actually published, and **Add to phone** puts them in a calendar app. Downloading again updates the entries rather than duplicating them. The calendar is published through the family portal, so you do not have to publish your term dates publicly for a parent to read them. **A parent-teacher meeting date carries time slots.** You add the times on the date itself and see booked of capacity as parents fill them. The parent books, not the child, because the appointment and the reminder emails are theirs; the child's name travels with the booking so your list still names the pupil. Reminders use the same schedule as every other booking in Muin, so there is nothing extra to set up. Changing a time is one step: the old one is released and the new one taken together, so a family can never end up with neither. One time per meeting date per family.
Can parents sign our handbook, and can enrollment stay incomplete until they do?
Yes. You publish the handbook as versioned text, and the parent reads it in place and signs by typing their own name, built for a phone rather than for a printer. Enrollment then reads **incomplete** until two things are true: the handbook is signed, and an emergency contact is on file. A **guardian does not count** as the emergency contact, because the question is who to call when the guardian cannot be reached, and neither does an adult who is only authorized to collect the child. The answer **names what is outstanding** rather than only saying incomplete, because a parent who cannot see which item is missing cannot clear it. A school that publishes no handbook is never marked incomplete for one; the emergency contact is still asked, because every school asks it. **A new school year is a new edition**, and publishing it turns a complete enrollment incomplete again so every family signs the current text. Last year's signature survives as the record of what was agreed. A correction inside the same year is not a new edition and does not make a whole school re-sign; a prompt that fires on noise is one people learn to ignore.
Can we add our own request types for families, such as early pickup or a laptop exception?
Yes. A request a family can send is a form you author, and each submission arrives in your queue as a task, exactly like the built-in ones. Two are ready to use and most schools start there: - **Early dismissal or pickup by another adult.** The adult is chosen from the child's own list, their guardians and the adults you authorized to collect them, so the screen can never offer someone the submit would refuse. There is a deadline in the day, often mid-morning; a later request is still filed and flagged as late rather than refused, because a parent whose child is ill at noon is not helped by an error. - **A laptop exception**, which needs no class and no adult. Add your own alongside them: name it, choose what it asks for, and publish. The four request types Muin ships with (reporting an absence, asking to change class, changing a tuition plan, correcting a child's record) stay as they are, because each one drives a specific change rather than only opening a task.
Can an assessment have a due date, and stop accepting marks after it?
Yes. Give the assessment a due date on the class gradebook, and finalize it when the marking is done. A finalized assessment refuses marks, all of them and not the odd row, because a locked assessment is not a typo in one mark. The refusal names its way out, and the way out is reachable: the same teacher who can lock it can reopen it, on the same permission. There is no higher door only we can open. A due date is optional, and clearing one is an explicit act rather than a side effect, because a project that slips to no fixed deadline is an ordinary thing for a school to do. **The reminder is for staff, not families.** It tells the teacher and coordinator when a deadline is close and the marks are not finalized, so finishing the marking stops it. Families meet due dates on the published calendar instead; one email per assignment to every parent is the kind of message people learn to ignore. The reminder is off until you turn it on.
Our program is full. What happens to the next family who registers?
They are **waitlisted** rather than turned away. A waitlisted row holds no seat and starts no tuition, so nothing is billed and nothing is promised. To give a waitlisted child their place, open the program's **Participants** tab and press **Admit** on their row. You can also let Muin promote the next waitlisted child automatically when somebody cancels. There is no separate approve-or-reject queue to work through: the Participants tab *is* the admission screen, and the Waitlisted status is a filter on it.
How do we move a child to a different class, or a different program?
**Between classes in the same program** is one dialog: open the class roster, use **Move to another class** on the child's row, then **Confirm move**. There is a bulk version for a group of children at once. The old class enrollment is cancelled and kept as a record, the new one is created, and only *unmarked* future attendance is cleared. Marks already taken are history and stay. A move is refused when the two classes meet at overlapping times on the same day. **Between programs is refused**, and the refusal says why: the child's program enrollment, their level and group, and their tuition all belong to the program they are in. A straight move would leave all three behind, so they would vanish from both rosters and keep being billed for the one they left. The route is therefore: enroll them in the other program, place them in one of its classes, then end the old enrollment.
A teacher marked the wrong child last week. How do we fix it?
A register can be edited in place for **24 hours**. After that, or once the session has been closed out, an in-place edit is refused and the correction is recorded as an **amendment with a reason** instead. A program administrator can amend a child's attendance, unlock a session's register, and reopen a teacher's presence. The teacher sees the refusal with the way out in it: "The 24-hour window for changing this register has closed. Ask a program administrator to make the change." This is deliberate rather than awkward: who changed a register and when is itself one of your reports, and a silent retrospective edit would erase it.
A parent signed in but sees none of their children. Why?
Almost always because they are not linked as a **guardian** of the child, rather than anything to do with the enrollment. The family area appears only for a guardian of a live-enrolled child. A parent who signs in without that link sees "No children on your account yet" and is told to contact the office. The fix is to add the guardian relationship on the child's person record. Two neighbouring causes worth ruling out: - **The child is enrolled but not placed in a class.** The portal then says their schedule and attendance will appear once they are in a class. Place them on **Class enrollment**. - **They signed in with a different address.** The portal only recognizes the email or phone you hold for them, and says so plainly rather than pretending to send a code.
What is the Attendance exceptions screen for?
It is one program's punch review queue: every punch that needs a human look before the hours are trusted, and every class that ran with nobody clocked in. The codes it shows are **Late**, **Off-site**, **No photo**, **Auto-closed**, **No-badge fallback**, **Self-amended**, **Outside schedule** and **Unusually long punch**. Open it from the header of **Live now**. Reviewing it needs program-view rights, not payroll rights, so a principal or coordinator can clear the queue without seeing anyone's pay.
Does Muin stop us double-booking a teacher or a room?
A **room** is checked when you save the meeting time: if the location is set to hold one activity at a time and something already has it, the save is refused and names what is there. If your hall genuinely seats two classes apart, raise "Activities at the same time" on that location under Settings, Locations. A **teacher** is not blocked at the moment you assign them, so the timetable is where it is caught. The **Class schedule** screen badges the occurrence "Teacher double-booked", and a group with two classes at once is badged "Group double-booked" because its children are booked twice. The program console's **Checks & balances** tab is the per-program version of the same list, in sentences naming both classes and the time. It also covers classes that cannot run at all: no teacher, no meeting time, and subjects you say you teach that nobody is scheduled to teach.
Can we print a report card or a transcript?
Yes, a report card. A **progress, midterm or final** report card prints as a PDF from **released** marks only, in your school's template. From the class gradebook you can download one student's report card or the whole class as one PDF. If nothing of that kind is released yet, Muin says what to release first. Parents download their own child's report card in the family portal, under **My children**, after release. Your template is set under **Settings, Nonprofit, Education, Report cards**: color, font, logo, header and footer, signatures, page size, how grades show, which sections print, and the language. There is **no transcript across terms**.
How do teachers post the week plan and the recap?
Each class has one week plan per week. A teacher opens **My teaching**, the class session, then the **This week** card (on a phone: the Muin app, Education, My teaching). A coordinator uses the class hub, **Week** tab. 1. Add this week's topics, goals and homework. A topic can point at a syllabus unit. 2. **Post the plan.** 3. On Friday, tick what you covered, add notes, and **Post recap**. A recap needs a posted plan first. A topic the recap did not mark taught moves into next week's draft with a **Carried from last week** chip. Families can get a **weekly class email** with the posted plan and a **weekly child digest** after the recap. Both are off until your school turns them on, and go out on Friday at 17:00 by default.
Who releases marks to families, and can a principal see results?
A teacher marks; an **admin releases**. Releasing needs program management rights: a program director, a coordinator or an organization admin. Use **Release** on the assessment in the class hub, **Gradebook** tab. If a student has no mark, release is refused and names them. Mark them or set them Excused, or tick the option to release with them unmarked. Releasing again sends nothing. A **principal** can read every class's gradebook and the program's **Results summary** (program console, Reports tab) without releasing anything. Each child's family gets one message per release, and only for the parent messages your school turned on.
Which messages do parents get, and can they be texts?
Muin has fourteen parent messages, including Absent, Grade posted, Weekly class email, Weekly child digest, Exam scope, Report card and Competition result. Every one is **off until you turn it on** under **Settings, Nonprofit, Class Alerts**, in the **Parent messages** group. You can set them for the school, per level, or per class; the nearest setting wins. Some messages can also go as a **short text** that points to the family portal. A guardian is texted only when all of these hold: - SMS is turned on for your organization. It is off by default, and the Muin team turns it on one organization at a time after a review. - Your school chose SMS for that message, and the message is on. - The guardian gave consent to texts. A guardian without consent still gets the email.
Can we run a competition with judges?
Yes, from the program console, **Competitions** tab. Set a scoring rubric, how scores add up, how ties are broken, and how many places you award. - **Judges score by private link** on their phones. No account is needed. **Live tally** ranks each category as scores arrive. - **Ties** are broken by the rules you chose, in order: higher score on a criterion, highest single score from any judge, or by hand. - **Lock results**, then print the **Run-sheet**, which reads 3rd, 2nd, then 1st. **Announce** cannot be undone. - A screen with the **Competition winners** widget reveals the announced results. - **All certificates** downloads one certificate per winner, once results are locked.
Can a family pay tuition on the card terminal?
Yes. In the Muin app on a card terminal, choose **Pay**, then **Tuition**, pick the family's child, and take the card. The payment is booked once, as tuition, and is split across every sibling in the family who owes, the same way a cash tuition payment is. Tuition is not a charitable gift, so there is no tax receipt.
How do we email just this term's families?
Open the program, go to the **Participants** tab, and press **Message participants**. That hands this program's roster to the message composer with its families already selected, so you are not rebuilding an audience by hand. You can attach a form if you are asking them to sign up for something, and Muin tracks who has responded so you chase only the families still outstanding. **The Announcements screen is not this.** Announcements are for your own staff: the audience is everyone, roles, departments or a location, with no program or class targeting. For one child there is also a **Messages** thread in the family portal, between the parent and the child's teacher.
Are parents emailed automatically when their child is marked absent?
Only once you turn it on. There are seven per-child class alerts and **all seven are off by default**: absent, not checked in, not picked up, the monthly unexcused-absence warning, a grade posted, a progress sheet published, and the monthly attendance summary. Turn on the ones you want at **Settings → Nonprofit → Class Alerts**. One thing to check first: a class with no teacher of record and no program coordinator has its alerts calculated and then dropped, because there is nobody to attribute them to. The settings screen tells you how many classes are in that state, so fix those before relying on alerts.
How do I see which students were late or absent this month?
Open **Reporting & Analytics**, then **Education**, then **Tardiness**. Pick the month, then set **Absent at least** a number of days, **Late at least** a number of minutes in total, or both. The list shows each student's days absent, times late, minutes late and guardians, and exports to CSV. - A day absent is a day with an unexcused absence and no present or late mark. Excused absences never count. - Minutes late add up every recorded late arrival in the month, measured from the class start. - The two lines start from your education policy: 3 days and 30 minutes unless you changed them. Only a recorded arrival counts as late: the **Late** button, a card tap or a self check-in. A plain present tick never does.
How do I message the parents of students who were late or absent too often?
On the **Tardiness** report, select the students and press **Message guardians**. This needs the programs manage permission. - Edit the warning text, then check the preview of the email a guardian will receive. - The counts show how many guardians will be emailed, how many opted out, how many have no email, and how many students have no guardian on file. - Each guardian gets one email listing each of their own children on the list. - The same child's month is never sent twice to the same guardian. Call the families marked **no email** or **opted out**. To have Muin send the summary each month for you, turn on **Monthly attendance summary** and the family notice in the class alerts settings. Both are off by default.
I pressed Send on Message guardians and nothing went out. Why?
The most common reason is a missing mailing address. Every email to a family must carry your organization's mailing address, so without it every family email is refused and Muin says "No email was sent." Add it under **Business Address** on your organization profile (**Settings, Company**), then send again. Other reasons the result screen names: - Every guardian on the list has no email on file or has opted out. - The school's daily email limit was reached. Send again tomorrow. - Those guardians were already sent that child's month. Muin never sends the same child's month twice to the same guardian.
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