Import pre-admission students
Import pre-admission students
Pre-admission (pre-enrolment) students are future joiners held in your MIS who haven't been formally placed yet. Enabling pre-admission tells the sync to pull these students so you can set their accounts up ahead of time.
These settings live on the Sync tab of School settings.
Nothing is imported until you choose it
Pre-admission pupils are never added on their own. You pick the ones who are genuinely joining, set the year group they'll be in, and the next sync creates their accounts.
This changed in July 2026. Until then, an applicant your MIS had marked accepted was imported overnight without anyone doing anything. That no longer happens — including for accepted applicants. If you were relying on it, your future joiners will sit and wait until somebody chooses them, so it's worth checking the list at the start of each intake.
Why the change: pre-admission lists are rarely a single tidy intake. They mix genuine joiners with applicants who'll go elsewhere, and they often span several year groups at once — a few into Year 7, a couple into Year 9, a mid-year arrival in Year 4. Importing all of them and sorting it out afterwards created accounts for children who never arrived.
Your MIS's application status (Applied, Offered, Accepted, …) is still shown next to every pupil, so you can use it to decide. It just no longer decides for you. If your MIS marks somebody withdrawn, rejected or declined, that overrides your choice and they are not imported.
Pupils are grouped by the year they were born
A UK school year runs from 1 September to 31 August, so every child belongs to a year group by date of birth. The list groups your applicants that way — one group per birth year — and you set the year group for a whole group at once.
Where we can, the year group is filled in for you. We look at your own current pupils born in that same year and copy whatever year group they're in — so if your Year 6 is recorded as year-06, that's exactly what your new pupils get, not a near-miss that would put them in a separate group in Google or Microsoft. The list tells you where a suggestion came from ("matches your current Year 6"), and warns you when your existing pupils don't agree with each other.
Two groups won't get a suggestion, and both say so:
- A brand-new intake. If you have no current pupils born in that year, there's nothing to copy — normal for your youngest joiners. Choose the year group they'll be in.
- Pupils with no date of birth in your MIS. They're grouped together, still fully selectable, and just need a year group choosing.
You can also override a single pupil inside a group, for the occasional joiner who isn't with the rest of their age group.
See the username before you commit to it
The list shows the username each pupil will get, worked out with your school's own username policy — and it updates as soon as you change a year group, for a whole group or one pupil. That matters because the year forms part of the username and a username can't be changed afterwards except by renaming the user, one at a time.
If somebody at your school already has that username, a warning appears: the sync adds a number to the end. We can't say which number, because it depends on who else is created in the same run — so treat the column as what to expect, not a promise.
When pre-admission sync runs (the annual pause)
Pre-admission sync runs most of the year but pauses for a few weeks each autumn — roughly 28 August to 30 September — resuming on 1 October. This pause is deliberate: at the very start of term your MIS can briefly list the same pupil as both a pre-admission student and a live student, which would create duplicate accounts. Sitting out that overlap avoids the duplication.
While paused, the settings page shows a "pre-admission sync is paused right now" notice with the dates, and the Logs record an intentional skip — so a paused sync is clearly working as designed, not broken. Only pre-admission sync pauses; your live students sync as normal throughout. Pupils already set up are not suspended while the pause is on, and they are picked up again when it lifts.
Why the year group matters, and which year to give
Pre-admission students haven't started with you yet, so the MIS gives them no year group. The sync uses the year group you set to assign their cohort year, and username policies need a year to generate usernames. Because of this it is required when pre-admission is enabled — and the sync will not import pre-admission students at all while it's unset (it logs the misconfiguration instead, rather than guessing a year).
The year to enter is the one these pupils are in now, not the one they are joining. They are still at their current school and will move up in September, so a school taking its intake into Year 7 enters 6. Entering the joining year instead makes their usernames a year out, and usernames can't be changed afterwards.
The year group they are in now setting in School settings is now only a fallback, used for any group you don't set yourself. The per-group choice on the import screen is the main control.
Pupils held because your MIS hasn't said when they start
Part of a username is the year a pupil joins, and a username can't be changed once it exists. Where your MIS gives no admission date, we normally hold the pupil rather than guess.
You can override that. When every held pupil is held for that one reason, the release offers a tick box to create them anyway — on the year group you chose, which is shown on the list along with the username each pupil will get.
The tick is remembered for the current freeze and clears itself when your provisioning window rolls forward, so a decision made one summer can't quietly still be in force the next. After ticking it, rebuild the preview — the list is worked out by the sync, so it won't show the change until it's rebuilt.
Without it these pupils aren't lost. The normal sync creates them when the freeze lifts; the tick creates them now.
What you can't override is a pupil whose admission date disagrees with the year their username would carry. That usually means the year group is one out, and it's the mistake worth catching — so those pupils stay held until it's fixed.
Reception and your youngest joiners
Reception joiners work, as long as your school records that year group under a name. If your current Reception pupils are stored as Reception, Year-R or similar, that value appears in the list like any other and you can pick it.
The one thing that doesn't work is a year group recorded as a bare zero. The sync has nowhere to store a cohort year of 0, so the pupil would be created without a username and could never sign in or reach Google or Microsoft. If that's how your Reception year is recorded, add those children from Users → Add user instead — and let us know, because it's worth correcting at the source.
Preview who currently qualifies
Open Data → Incoming learners and mentors → Learners in the sidebar, or select Preview on the Pre-admission card in settings, to see exactly who your MIS would admit right now — real names, pulled live from Wonde using the same accepted-only rule the sync applies. It works whether the toggle is on or off, so you can check "if I turn this on, who gets added?" before committing. It also shows anyone held back and why (their actual application status), and reports plainly if it can't run yet (for example, no year group set). Nothing on the preview changes anything — it's read-only.
Steps
Step 1 — Open School settings → Sync {#step-1}
In a single school (not MAT mode), open School settings and select the Sync tab. Scroll to the Pre-admission section.
Step 2 — Turn on pre-admission {#step-2}
Tick Import pre-admission students. A Year group they are in now field appears.
Step 3 — Set the year group they are in now {#step-3}
Enter the year group these pupils are in this year — the one they are finishing elsewhere before they join you — not the year group they are joining.
- Joining Year 7 → enter
6 - Joining Year 3 → enter
2
This is only the fallback now — the per-group choice on the import screen is what you'll normally use, and it's filled in from your own pupils.
If your username policy is one we can read, the settings page shows the number it expects and warns you if what you have entered doesn't match. It's only a warning — you can still save a different number if your intake really is different. Get it right first time if you can: the year forms part of the username, and a username can't be changed once it has been created (an existing one can only be corrected by renaming the user).
Step 4 — Save {#step-4}
Select Save pre-admission. The settings take effect at the next sync.
Step 5 — Choose who to import {#step-5}
In the sidebar, open Data → Incoming learners and mentors → Learners, then select Choose pupils.
Your applicants appear grouped by the school year they were born into, youngest first. For each group, check the year group. It's already filled in wherever we could match against your own current pupils — you don't have to accept anything, just change what's wrong. Reset to suggested puts everything back if you've changed your mind.
Then tick the pupils who are genuinely joining (Tick all does a whole group), and select Approve for import.
Each pupil then shows as Chosen — will be created on the next MIS sync, and gains a tick once their account exists. Ticked pupils stay in the list so you can see how far through an intake you are; hide them if you'd rather see only what's left. If you tick somebody by mistake, select Remove — that stops them being created, though it does not remove an account that has already been made.
If your sync is paused — the annual pre-admission pause, an end-of-year freeze, or MIS sync set to preview — you can still choose pupils. A notice at the top says so: your choices are saved straight away and the accounts are created as soon as the pause ends.
Step 6 — Send the new accounts to your cloud platform {#step-6}
Once the accounts exist, a notice appears offering Send to cloud. Use it: at many schools the overnight run doesn't pick these accounts up on its own, so this is the step that creates their Google or Microsoft account and lets them sign in.
Setting pupils up early, so they can start before term
Schools that want joiners working before they arrive — prep work over the summer, or a head start on reading — can set them up as soon as the pupils appear in the MIS. Choose them, create their accounts, send them to your cloud platform, and hand out the logins. The username shown in the list is the one they'll get.
Three things pause the account creation, and the page tells you which applies. Your choices are always saved straight away; it's the accounts that wait.
- The annual pre-admission pause (28 August – 30 September). Nothing is created during it. If you want joiners set up for September, choose them before 28 August — after that the accounts wait until 1 October.
- End-of-year provisioning freeze. Use Release early accounts, on this page, to create the pupils you've chosen straight away — you don't have to wait for the freeze to lift. If a cloud sync is switched on and live, their Google or Microsoft account is created too. If not, they're created in Realsmart only and you can hand out those logins now; the cloud account follows whenever you turn a sync on.
- MIS sync set to preview. Nothing is imported at all while preview is on; switch it off when you're ready.
Result
At the next sync, pre-admission students with an accepted application — plus any you approved by hand — are pulled from your MIS. They are given the year group you set (or the one you chose for them individually), so cohort years and usernames are assigned correctly. Applicants who aren't accepted and haven't been approved are skipped, and every decision is visible in the Logs.
Troubleshooting
- "I approved a pupil and nothing has happened" — after 7 days we tell you: a notification appears saying how many approved pupils still have no account. Approving records the decision; the account is created by the next sync. Four things delay that, and the screen tells you which applies: pre-admission sync is in its annual pause (nothing happens until 1 October), your school's provisioning is frozen for end of year, MIS sync is set to preview mode (which imports nothing at all), or a sync was triggered too recently and is waiting for its cooldown. In every case the approval is saved and acts when the wait ends.
- "The pupil was created but isn't in Google or Microsoft" — use Send to cloud on the pre-admission list. The overnight cloud run doesn't cover every school.
- "I can't tick a pupil" — they're already in Realsmart, already chosen, or your MIS didn't send an ID we can match them on. Approving without a matching ID would create a duplicate when your MIS finally sends them, so we refuse instead.
- "An accepted student wasn't added" — accepted applicants are no longer imported on their own; somebody has to choose them. Open the Learners page and tick them.
- "No pre-admission students are importing at all" — make sure the year group they are in now is set; without it the import deliberately doesn't run (there's an error entry in the Logs saying so).