Term Dates

Term Dates is the block's year laid out a term at a time: when each term runs, when your lessons in it start, and how many there are. Where your service allows it, you can move a term's start or add to the lessons it holds, and the diary is re-laid to match.

Column	What it is
Term	The term's name
From and To	The term's own dates, set by the service
Start date	The date your lessons in that term begin
Sessions	How many lessons the term should hold
Lessons	How many are actually in the diary

Sessions against Lessons is the column pair worth reading. Where they differ, the term has not been laid out to the number it is meant to hold — most often because the diary ran out of teaching days.

Changing a term

Edit opens the term. A term showing Started cannot be changed, and "started" here does not simply mean the dates have passed: it means something in that term already counts — a register mark, a task result, a pay claim, a credit or a make-up. Once any of those exists, the term is a record.

• Start date must fall inside the term's own From and To dates. The time of day is kept — you are moving which day the run begins, not rescheduling the lesson itself.
• No of lessons has a minimum, shown under the field. You can raise it as far as 52, but never lower it.

Where your service does not let teachers change one of these, the field is still shown but fixed, so you can see what it is set to.

You cannot shorten a term from here

Lessons in the sequence are never deleted, so asking for fewer lessons than the term already has is refused outright. Shortening a term is the office's job — ask them.

Confirm before it is laid

Save does not save. It shows what would happen: how many lessons would move and how many would be added, then the full list of dates the term would end up with, numbered in order. The lessons move in order to those dates, at the block's own time of day and frequency, and any new ones are added for the pupils already on it.

Read the list. It is the one place you see the consequence of a start date that lands awkwardly — dates running past where you expected the term to end, or a term that cannot fit what you asked for. Then Confirm to lay them, or Back to change the date and look again.

When it is refused

You are told why, and every reason at once rather than one at a time. A term will not re-lay when:

• it has started — a mark, outcome, claim, credit or make-up in it
• it has been invoiced
• the block records contracted time, or has no regular frequency
• fewer lessons would fit than you asked for
• you asked for fewer lessons than it already has

Two of these are about permission rather than the term itself: the service doesn't let teachers change lesson dates, and the service doesn't let teachers change how many lessons a term has. Both are service settings, so the answer is the office rather than another attempt.