Academic years: the calendar the whole school runs on
The year, its terms and the one that is current right now — build this first and everything else lines up behind it.
Academic years is the calendar your school works to. It decides which year a learner is in, which term they are sitting, when a fee instalment falls due, and which rows of marks, timetables and reports belong together. Almost nothing else in the portal can be trusted until this screen is right.
Everything here lives in one table, whatever your programme calls it. A basic education school usually has one Academic Year per year and two or three Terms inside it. A university usually has one Academic Year with two Semesters. A vocational centre often works with Sequences or a Cohort Duration. The Type column tells you which of these a row is, and the Parent Year column tells you which year it belongs to.
This is a once-a-year screen, and it is normally owned by the head of school or the academic secretary — not by the bursar and not by the teachers. Ten minutes in September saves a term of arguing about whose report belongs to which year.
Set up the coming year in five steps
From an empty screen to a calendar your school can teach against.
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Step 1
Open Academic > Academic Years
The list shows every year, term and sequence your school has ever created, newest position first.
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Step 2
Create the year
Click New Academic Time Unit. Leave Parent Year empty, set the Type to Academic Year, give the Title the parents will read — “2026/2027” — and put a number in Position.
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Step 3
Give it a code and its dates
The Abbreviation is the short code printed on report slips and broadsheets — “2026”, “S1”, “T1”. Then set the Start Date and the End Date so that every screen can answer “what runs now”.
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Step 4
Add the periods inside it
Create one row per term or semester with the Parent Year set to the year you just made — First Term, Second Term, Third Term, or Semester 1 and Semester 2. Give each its own dates and position.
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Step 5
Tick Current on the one you are running
Open the row and tick the Current box. The next year you create should be left unticked until September, so the school always has one current year.
Years, terms, semesters and sequences
Five types, one table. Pick the ones your programme really uses and leave the rest empty.
The five types
Academic Year is the container: 2026/2027. Term is the basic-education pattern — First Term, Second Term, Third Term. Semester is the university pattern — Semester 1, Semester 2. Sequence is used where work is broken into sequences rather than terms. Cohort Duration spans the whole life of a vocational cohort. Every one of them is a row in the same table with its own start and end dates.
Parent Year is what makes them hang together
A row with no Parent Year is a top-level year. A row with one belongs to that year, and that is how the portal knows that “Second Term” sits inside 2026/2027 and not inside last year. Choose the parent from the same table, and keep the parent’s Type consistent: terms inside a year, not inside a semester.
Position controls the order you see
The Position number decides where a row falls in every dropdown that lists periods. Give First Term position 1, Second Term 2, Third Term 3 and the dropdowns read in the order a head of school would say them out loud, instead of in the order they happened to be created. Renumbering is a two-minute job once a year and it is the difference between a tidy dropdown and a confusing one.
Abbreviation is what gets printed
Short codes are what families actually read: on a report slip, on a broadsheet column heading, on a timetable slot. “S1” or “T1” is legible on a small printout; “Semester 1 — 2026/2027 First Half” is not. Write the full title once in the Title column and keep the Abbreviation short.
Exactly one year is current
The single most important tick on this screen, and what breaks when it is wrong.
Ticking Current clears the others
The Current box is exclusive by type. Tick it on one row and the flag comes off every other row of the same type for your school — you cannot accidentally end up with two current years, which is the failure that quietly duplicates fees and splits marks across two reports.
Set the year you are actually teaching in
In September you tick the new year and untick the old one by ticking the new one. In June, if you are already running assessments, leave the year alone: the current flag should follow the calendar of teaching, not the calendar of administration. A school that creates the next year in July and immediately ticks it will find its enrolments defaulting to a year that has not started.
Active and Current are two different questions
Active answers “may this still be used?”. Current answers “are we in it right now?”. Retired years stay in the table with Active switched off, so last year’s enrolments, receipts and reports still make sense; only the one row carries Current. Set Active on the year and the periods you are using now, and switch it off when you close the books on a year.
What reads the current year
The Enrollments list opens filtered to it, and its Academic Year dropdown offers only active years. Fee structures and Booklists open on it. The fee total a learner is given comes from the structure for the class in that year. Get the year wrong and every one of those screens is quietly working on last term’s data.
What reads the calendar
Set the year once and these screens follow it.
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Groups
Classes
The streams, levels and cohorts learners are placed into, the group every enrolment needs.
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Subjects
Courses
What is taught, to which group, with which coefficient and how many credits it carries.
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Scheduling
Timetables
The weekly grid, built on the periods you have just defined as terms or semesters.
Academic year questions
Asked in September, every year, by somebody new.
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Do I need terms as well as the year itself?
If your school reports each term and collects fees per term, yes — a basic education school usually needs three. Create each one with its Parent Year set to the year, and its own start and end dates. A university works the same way with two semesters. If you genuinely teach and bill in one undivided block of the year, a single row is enough and nothing forces you to split it.
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Why can I not have two current academic years?
Because every screen that opens on the current year would then have two candidates, and the choice would silently fall to whichever came first. Ticking Current on a second row automatically clears the flag on the others of the same type, so the school always has exactly one current year and every fee, report and mark set lands on the same calendar.
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When should I tick Current on next year’s row?
On the day the new year actually starts teaching — not the day you create it. Create next year’s row in July or August so you can build its fee structures and timetables in advance, but leave Current on the running year until the first real school day. That way new enrolments land in the year you are teaching.
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What is the Abbreviation used for?
It is the short code that gets printed on report slips, broadsheet column headings and timetable slots — S1 or T1 for a semester or term, 2026 for a year. Because it appears on small printouts given to families, keep it to two or three characters. The full title stays on the Title field, where you can afford to write “First Term — 2026/2027”.