Student Trove
Attendance Calculator
Find out exactly how many classes you can still miss — or need to attend — to meet your requirement.
Your Attendance Details
Your Attendance Status
How the attendance calculation works
Attendance requirements are expressed as a percentage of the classes scheduled for the whole term, not the classes held so far. That single detail is what makes the arithmetic feel counter-intuitive: your attendance percentage today can sit well below the threshold while you are still perfectly safe, because the classes you have yet to attend are counted in the denominator from the start.
Four numbers do all the work.
classes already held = total classes − classes remainingcurrent attendance % = attended ÷ classes already held × 100minimum you must attend = ceiling(required % × total classes)classes you can still miss = classes remaining − (minimum you must attend − attended)
The ceiling matters. If a 75% requirement across 50 classes gives 37.5, you cannot attend half a class, so the real requirement rounds up to 38. Rounding down here is the single most common way students miscount their way out of an exam.
A worked example
Thabo is taking a module with 48 scheduled classes and an 80% attendance requirement. Fifteen classes are still to be held, so 33 have already taken place, and he has attended 26.
Working it through
Note how tight that margin is despite the healthy-looking 78.8%. With 15 classes left there is very little room, and one bad week ends it. Had he run the same numbers at the halfway point, he would have had far more freedom to spend an absence deliberately.
Attendance and DP requirements in South Africa
South African universities generally tie attendance to DP — Duly Performed status. DP is the set of conditions you must satisfy during the term to be admitted to the final exam. Attendance is commonly one of them, usually set at 75% or 80%, and often stricter for practicals and tutorials than for lectures.
The consequence of losing DP is different in kind from doing badly on a test. You are not given a low mark; you are refused entry to the exam and typically have to repeat the module. Because it is a threshold rather than a sliding scale, there is no partial credit for being close, and no way to make it up with a strong exam performance.
- 75% — the most common lecture threshold; you may miss a quarter of scheduled classes.
- 80% — common for practicals, labs and tutorials, where sessions are harder to replace.
- 100% — occasionally applied to compulsory field trips, clinical rotations or assessment practicals.
Thresholds vary by faculty and sometimes by individual module, so treat your module guide as the authority rather than what a classmate tells you.
Frequently asked questions
How many classes can I miss with a 75% attendance requirement?
You can miss 25% of the total number of classes scheduled for the module. For a module with 48 classes, 75% of 48 is 36, so you must attend 36 and may miss 12. The important detail is that the percentage is almost always calculated against the total scheduled for the whole term, not against the classes held so far — so missing four of your first eight classes does not mean you have failed, it means you have already used four of your twelve.
What is a DP requirement?
DP stands for Duly Performed. At most South African universities it is the set of conditions you must meet during the term to be allowed to write the final exam, and a minimum attendance percentage is usually one of them, alongside submitting compulsory assignments or passing a minimum number of tests. Losing DP does not mean you failed the module on marks — it means you are refused entry to the exam, which is why attendance is worth tracking deliberately rather than estimating.
Do cancelled classes count against my attendance?
No. A class that was cancelled by the department was never held, so it should be removed from the total rather than recorded as an absence. If three of a module's 48 classes are cancelled, your requirement is calculated against 45. Enter the number of classes that will actually be held, otherwise the calculator will tell you that you need to attend classes that do not exist.
Does a medical certificate change the calculation?
It depends on your institution. Some treat an excused absence as attended, some remove it from the total, and some do not adjust attendance at all and only excuse missed assessments. Check the module guide, then enter the numbers the way your institution counts them — if an excused absence is treated as attended, include it in the attended figure.
Is attendance calculated per module or across all my modules?
Almost always per module. A strong attendance record in one module does not offset a weak one in another, because each module's DP requirement is assessed on its own. Run the calculator once per module rather than pooling all your classes into a single figure.
What counts as a class for attendance purposes?
This varies more than students expect. Some modules count only lectures, some count only practicals and tutorials, and some count all contact sessions but apply a stricter threshold to labs — it is common to see 80% required for practicals and no formal requirement for lectures. Confirm which sessions are counted before you rely on any number, and calculate each category separately if the thresholds differ.
Tracking attendance without recalculating
A calculator gives you a snapshot. The problem is that the snapshot goes stale the moment you miss a class, and the number you actually want — how many absences do I have left — is only useful if it is in front of you when you are deciding whether to skip.
Study Planner tracks attendance per subject and lets you set an allowed number of absences for each one. It marks attendance from your timetable, keeps the running percentage, and warns you when you have one absence left instead of leaving you to notice.