---
title: Student attributes
description: Information on the data types and settings for student attributes in GO 4 Schools
---
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# Student attributes
Student attributes provide a mechanism for you to store data about students that is not currently retrieved from your MIS and that is not suitable for storing in subject specific markbooks. For instance, you might want to store students' feeder schools, their reading ages, ability ranges, post codes or details of interventions they are involved in. You can define as many different attributes as you like, and each offers the following settings:
- **Name** - the name of the attribute to be used within the attribute management pages
- **Public name** - an alternative name, to be used when the attribute is displayed to staff, students, and parents.
- **Description** - some information about the attribute that is displayed to staff, students, and parents.
- **Data type** - the types of value held for an attribute. The available data types are:
- Text (which must be shorter than 8,000 characters)
- Number (used for storing numbers between -100,000 and +100,000)
- Boolean (e.g. yes/no, true/false, 0/1)
- Date
**NB -** The data type cannot be changed once values have been stored for an attribute.
- **Visibility** - whether the values held should be displayed to staff, students, or parents.
- **Usage** - whether to use the attribute for groups students in analysis. This will affect tables displayed on the relevant pages.
- **Use for analysis of attainment data** - Will offer a breakdown of attainment for full statistics and focus group statistics.
- **Use for analysis of behaviour data** - Will display in behaviour charts, as well as be included in the CSV download **Export behaviour data including student attributes set for 'analysis of behaviour' data by year group**.
- **Use for messaging** - Will be listed in the school message popup for selecting students by attribute.
- **Use for analysis of attendance data** - Will offer a breakdown of attendance data on the whole school and year group attendance analysis pages.
- **Use as a Special Register on attendance page** - Will flag the attribute to be used as a special register - if selected, you also get the option to allow attendance officers to manage the values for the attribute.
- **Include in profile on the student page** - Will display the attribute and value on the student profile.
**NB** - You should consider limiting the attributes used for analysis of attainment/behaviour/attendance data to a relatively small subset to limit the volume of statistics generated.
Student attributes do not appear in the report explorers because attribute values are not included in the snapshots when reports are prepared.
There are three types of student attributes available in GO 4 Schools - Custom, Special, and System. Custom attributes are attributes which schools can set up for their own needs, to allow for tracking on categories not covered by the special and system attributes. Special attributes are attributes that GO 4 Schools has built in to cover various needs/data tracking, as defined [here](https://support.go4schools.com/modular/special-student-attributes). System attributes are values taken from your MIS and are not editable by schools via GO 4 Schools, only via their MIS.
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