What are academic years?
Setting up an academic year is not only crucial for the upcoming school year, it also allows schools to perform certain actions far in advance. For example, organise school trips or plan for future admissions.
🔒 The actions within this article are controlled by the Academic years permission.
Create new academic year
You can create academic years at any point, as far in advance as necessary.
Go to Tools > School > Academic structure > Academic years.
Click Create.
Enter the academic year start date.
The end date is calculated automatically based on the start date.
You can adjust this date should you need to, e.g. if you plan on starting future academic years earlier than this one.
💡 There should not be any gaps between academic years; the new year should start the day after the previous one ends.
Schedule school days
All days within an academic year should be accounted for. There should be no unscheduled days when you finish adding terms and closures.
Add terms
First, add your terms for this academic year.
Click + to add a term
The start date automatically defaults to the academic year start date. We recommend keeping this date, and adding any INSET days as closures to adjust if necessary.
Set the end date for your term and click Save.
Repeat until you have scheduled all your terms.
We recommend creating 3 terms and defining half-terms as closures.
Add closures
Next, add school closures such as half terms and bank holidays.
Click + to add a closure
Give it a name, eg ‘Autumn half term’ or ‘Easter break’
Pick the appropriate closure type from the list:
Half-term
Holiday
Public holiday
Staff training
Elections
School closure
Select the attendance mark you like to bulk-fill for this closure
Define the scope of the closure as the full school or partial closure, eg. a specific Year group
Select which session marks you would like to update as AM, PM or both.
Repeat these steps until you have scheduled all your closures and there are no unscheduled days remaining.
Mark as complete
When all days have been scheduled, you will be able to mark the academic year as complete. This step might take a little while to complete, as it will create or update the relevant attendance records for the academic year.
You will also be able to see the the date and member of staff who performed this action.
Edit an existing academic year
You can untick the Complete checkbox at any point, if you need to make any changes in the future.
For example, you can adjust academic year dates, term dates or add closures, such as snow days or other unforeseen circumstances.
Once you are finished with your changes, remember to mark it as Complete again so that attendance records can be updated as necessary.
💡 The start and end dates cannot be adjusted for the current academic year. If this becomes necessary, our team will be able to help.