How and when do we do the end of year process?

When should we start?

Each Summer Term a number of steps must be completed to successfully set up the next Academic Year on Arbor. We recommend doing this setup before you break up for the summer holidays. 

There’s no need to wait until later in the summer, as the changes you make won’t take effect until the new school year starts in September.

The New School Year Setup area of Arbor is locked until the 1st May. Once the 1st May has passed, you can get started using our New School Year Setup guide.

This Overview page lets you view your progress. You can jump in and out of the New School Year Setup so you don’t need to do everything in one sitting! Your current step will be highlighted in red as Incomplete. Only when certain steps have been completed can the next steps be unlocked.

How long will it take?

In each step of our New School Year Setup guide, you can see an estimate of how long each step in the process will take. We estimate that in total the full setup takes:

• around 12 hours for Primaries
• around 15 hours for Secondaries

Is there a deadline?

We know schools will be completing this process at different times, so the deadline is to have this completed before the first day back in September, or there won't be any registers among other important setup steps.

However, we'd always recommend trying to complete this process before the summer holidays, when everyone that you may need to ask questions about where staff, pupils etc are going to be, is there for you to ask.

Do we have to complete all the steps?

Steps in bold are required for all schools. Other steps are optional depending on your Arbor package and requirements.

1. Enter all your school dates for the year
2. Off-Roll any Leavers
3. Promote your current Year Groups and Registration Forms
4. Copy over any Custom Groups you have set up that you may want to use again
5. Copy over Houses and House Enrollments into the new academic year
6. Enter the times for your registers to create your timetable
7. Copy over meals, meal sittings and meal choices for students
8. Copy over any Interventions you will continue to run
9. Set up other things you’ll need next year, like Assessments and Behaviour

If you don’t use a certain area (such as if you don’t use houses), you can mark the step as Complete without copying or creating anything.

Can we come back to a step later?

If you need to come back to a step later to add more information you can!

Just click Skip for now and put a reminder into your diary to come back to it later.

When you come back, click Resume progress.

Can we make changes once complete?

If you need to edit a step, click Resume progress.

Make sure to mark it as Complete again once you've finished making changes.

When can I off-roll my leavers?

You can off-roll all your students who are leaving your school in bulk and choose the day you’d like them to be unenrolled from! This is Step 2 in the New School Year Setup process. If you’re not sure which leaving date or reason to put, please contact the DfE.

When should I enrol my applicants?

Once you’ve completed the Year Groups & Registration Forms section of your new school year setup, you can enrol your applicants at any time. Assign their year groups and registration forms for next year, then accept their offers and officially enrol them from the Applicants section of Arbor! Don’t worry, they won’t be currently enrolled students until the start of the new academic year!

You can see further details here: Do we have to enrol our applicants now?