Academic calendar and holidays

Define school years, terms and holidays so GapFiller skips breaks when generating lessons and can estimate how many lessons you have left.

3 min readUpdated July 30, 2026

By the end of this guide you'll have a school year with terms and holidays, so timetable generation skips breaks and you can see remaining lessons.

Open Academic Calendar

Sidebar → School
Open the Academic Calendar tab

If you have more than one school, pick the school at the top of the tab first. You need at least one school before this tab can be configured.

The Academic Calendar tab with School Years & Terms and Holidays & Breaks — Open Academic Calendar under School Settings — years, terms and holidays live here

School years and terms

Under School Years & Terms, click Add School Year.

Name — e.g. 2025–26
Start Date and End Date
Current year — tick this for the year you are teaching now (used for remaining-lesson estimates)

Add School Year form with name, start date, end date and Current year — Add a school year and mark one as Current for remaining-lesson estimates

Then add terms inside that year (Add Term):

Term Name — e.g. First Trimester
Start and end dates within the school year

Terms split the year for planning and for the remaining-lessons breakdown.

Holidays and breaks

Under Holidays & Breaks, click Add Holiday.

Holiday Name — e.g. Christmas Break
School Year
Start and end dates (leave end the same as start for a single day)

Add Holiday form with name, school year and date range — Add holidays and breaks — those dates are skipped when lessons are generated

When you save a holiday that overlaps existing lessons, GapFiller may offer to Delete N lesson(s) planned during this holiday period. Use that if you want those days cleared from the calendar.

Holidays are skipped when lessons are generated from a timetable. Set breaks before you create a long timetable, or add them later — new generation and range updates respect the holidays you have saved.

You can also set term dates during onboarding; anything you skip there can be finished here.

Remaining lessons

The Remaining Lessons section estimates how many timetable slots are left in the current year (and per term), compared with lessons already on the calendar.

Numbers = expected slots from your timetable; figures in parentheses = lessons already scheduled.

The Remaining Lessons table by class and subject — Remaining Lessons shows expected slots from your timetable vs lessons already scheduled

You need a current school year with terms, plus grades that have a timetable, for this table to fill in. The same idea appears in calendar Stream stats.

What's next?

Create a timetable — weekly slots for each grade
How lessons are generated from a timetable — when holidays are skipped
How many lessons do you have left? — count remaining class meetings (blog)

Related guides

How lessons are generated from a timetable

Understand when GapFiller creates lessons from your timetable, how holidays are skipped, and what happens when you edit or delete slots and dates.

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Set up your weekly timetable — school, subject, class, date range and time slots — so GapFiller can place lessons on your calendar automatically.

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Manage schools, subjects and grades

Add and edit the schools where you teach, the subjects you cover, and the grades (classes) you run — the foundation for timetables, curricula and the calendar.

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