Hi
I think you may need to consider your data structure as well as just the production of your report. Typically, with Students and Courses, you would have Students, Courses and Course Attendance tables ( the latter is a Join table from Courses to Students and allows you to record other information such as dates etc).
In this way, you can then use the Page designer to, for example, provide you with the Students course attendance - see screen shot:
You could also produce the inverse in another Page Designer block showing a course and all the Students.
Hope this helps?