Why would we need to amend the academic calendar?
Setting up the academic calendar for the next school year allows you to accept applicants. For more information on this, click here. It is the first step to completing the new School Year Setup process to set up all your courses and student groups for the next academic year. As part of this, you set up your academic calendar for the next year.
You may also need to amend your academic calendar during the school year to resolve issues when no registers are appearing today because incorrect dates were set up for holidays, or to add these events:
- Scheduled school closures such as polling days
- Training days
- Changes in term dates
- Inset days
Permissions
- School: Academic Structure: Administer - amend the academic year or term dates.
- School: Calendar: Administer - add or amend holidays.
If you don't have permission, you'll need to ask an administrator to give you permission following these instructions.
Amending your academic calendar
To amend your academic calendar go to School > School Structure > Academic Years.
Select the current academic year from the table.
You will be taken to the Academic Calendar Overview. It shows information about the academic year, term dates and any holidays you have scheduled. on the left-hand side, you can see any weekdays that have not been marked as a school day or holiday. You can also download a Term Card or Student List.
To make any changes you must first click the Return to incomplete button.
Because the academic year already has enrolments, only the name can be changed by you. This is done to prevent inadvertent changes to dates, as it would affect enrolment dates across the system.
If you need to amend the start or end dates, this will need to be changed for you. Include what dates the year should be set to.
- Contact the Support Team if supported by Arbor
- Contact your Support Partner if not supported by Arbor
Please note that this can cause room changes to revert.
Adding a holiday or an inset day
Please note that if you are adding whole school closures into your academic calendar, you should do this before the day: Registers still there when school is marked as closed
I've been told I need to add an inset day to my calendar. To do this, click +Add in the Holidays section.
In the slide over, add in the type of holiday you wish to add and choose the relevant date(s). then click Add Academic Holiday.
The various options you have for holidays are:
- Half terms
- Vacation
- Public Holiday
- Religious Holiday
- Elections/Polling
- Inset
- Staff training
- Exceptional Circumstances (we advise against using this option, as these codes will be output as #, whereas the DfE advises to use Y for exceptional circumstances - more details can be found here)
To make sure that the changes have been applied, click the Mark Calendar as Complete button.
Resolving overlapping holiday and term dates
In this particular example, my school breaks up for Easter holiday at the end of the school day today. When using Arbor today I have found that there are no registers. This is because my academic calendar has been set up incorrectly to say that today is the first day of the Easter holiday, where the holiday should actually be scheduled to start on Monday (Arbor automatically discounts weekends).
As you can see from the below images, my Spring term is set to end on the 5th April, meaning that lessons are supposed to take place on 5th April. However, because the Easter break holiday is set to start on the 5th April, this overrides the term dates.
In Arbor, any holidays scheduled will override term dates, and there will be no registers during this time. This is useful when scheduling half terms and inset days.
To fix this issue, make sure that your vacations, such as Easter, do not overlap with your term dates.
To do this, click into the date you would like to amend. In the example, I need to change the start date for Easter Break to reflect the first date there should be no registers for.
Click Edit in the slide over.
Click to select the new Start date to correctly reflect the start of your holiday. Don't worry about including weekends, as Arbor automatically discounts these.
When you have amended the dates, click Save Changes.
To make sure that the changes have been applied, click the Mark Calendar as Complete button.
If you have amended your term times or holiday dates to affect today, you will have to open your meal registers manually.
Meal registers open at 4 am each morning, so any new meals required after this time will not be automatically opened.
For example, I have no registers showing today, and I realise this is because I have wrongly set my Easter Break to start today. I then amend my holiday dates using the process outlined above. As it is past 4 am, I know I now have to open my meal registers manually for today.
To do this go to School > Meals > Daily Summary.
Click the green Open Register button at the bottom right of the screen. The register will then be open.
Repeat this action for each meal you have for today by clicking each tab at the top of the page, and clicking the green Open Register button for each.
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