Use the Academic Calendar to add academic years, term dates, non-teaching days and other closures. Ecko can use this information to show a The Academic Year block at the end of published Editions. From here readers can subscribe to the feed in their own calendar which will automatically updated when you add or update your dates.
Flexible calendar
By default, Use flexible academic calendar is turned on. This mode gives you the flexibility to add as many or as few teaching periods to an academic year as you need to, depending on the structure your school or education authority uses. You can also specific the names of teaching periods, and the name of the non-teaching period that follows is.
With Use flexible academic calendar turned off, you can enter your term dates in the legacy 6-term mode. This is option is made available for backward-compatibility, so schools already using the classic 6-term structure can continue to do so. For most users, Flexible mode is recommended.
Add an academic year
- Open Settings.
- Select Academic Calendar.
- Click .
- Add the Label of the first teaching period, for example “Term 1” or “Summer Semester”.
- Click the Date range field and select the first teaching day of the period, then select the last teaching day of the period to create a date range, then click
- Add the Following break label. This is the name of the holiday or non-teaching period that immediately follows this teaching period, for example “Winter Break” or “Half Term”
- Click the + Add button in the Teaching Periods section to add the next term in this academic year.
- Repeat steps 4-7 until you’ve entered all the teaching periods for the academic year.
- Click the + Add button in the non-Teaching Days section to add any staff training days, INSET days or any other days when students aren’t expected to attend.
- Select .
Add the whole academic year rather than only the next term. You can add future academic years as far ahead as needed.
Edit or delete academic years
Use Edit to update an academic year that has already been added. Ecko allows users to delete the most recent academic year, but not an older academic year if there is a later one after it. This helps prevent gaps in the term date sequence.
- Open Settings.
- Select Academic Calendar.
- Select the button for adding the next academic year, such as .
- Add the term dates and inset days for the academic year.
- Select .
Add the whole academic year rather than only the next term. You can add future academic years as far ahead as needed.
Edit or delete academic years
Use Edit to update an academic year that has already been added. Ecko allows users to delete the most recent academic year, but not an older academic year if there is a later one after it. This helps prevent gaps in the term date sequence.
Show term dates in Editions automatically
- Open Settings.
- Select Academic Calendar.
- Turn on Automatically add to Editions if the term dates block should be added when a new Edition is created.
- Turn on Show past entries only if readers should see all of the current year’s dates, including past ones.
- Select .
When Automatically add to Editions is enabled, the Academic Year block appears after all Stories in each new Edition. Users can still manually add or remove the block from individual Editions.
Manually add the Academic Calendar block to an Edition
If you have Automatically add to Editions turned off, you can still add the Academic Calendar block to any edition.
- Open the Edition.
- Select the add block button.
- Select the Academic Calendar block.
- Save or publish the Edition.