The academic structure forms the foundation of openSIS. Before users begin managing students, staff, attendance, grades, scheduling, or reports, the institution’s academic calendar, school year, marking periods, grade levels, and instructional time blocks must be properly defined.
This article explains the key academic structure terms used in openSIS. Understanding these terms helps administrators configure the system correctly and helps users follow academic workflows with more clarity.
The Academic Calendar is the foundational time structure that defines the active school year.
It includes the start and end dates, instructional days, holidays, and attendance eligibility windows. Other academic configurations such as marking periods, scheduling, and attendance must fall within the calendar’s date boundaries.
Calendars are important because they affect attendance calculations, scheduling, school-day tracking, and academic reporting.
Found under:
School → Calendars
A School Year is the complete academic session of an institution.
In openSIS, the School Year is derived from the Academic Calendar’s start and end dates. If the calendar falls within one calendar year, it may appear as a single year, such as 2025. If the calendar crosses into another year, it may appear as a span, such as 2025–2026.
The School Year acts as a boundary for academic data. Schedules, grades, attendance, transcripts, and reports are tied to a specific school year.
Used in:
Student enrollment, scheduling, attendance, grading, report cards, transcripts, and reports.
The Active School Year is the school year currently being used for system operations.
Most records entered in openSIS are connected to the selected active school year. This helps institutions maintain records year by year without mixing current and previous academic data.
A Marking Period is a subdivision of the School Year used to organize grading cycles, academic terms, and reporting windows.
openSIS supports a structured marking period setup using a parent-child-grandchild hierarchy.
Example:
Full Year → Semester → Quarter
Marking periods are used in many academic workflows, including attendance, grade posting, report cards, GPA, transcripts, and academic reports.
Grade Posting Dates are optional start and end dates configured within a Marking Period.
These dates control when teachers can submit final grades. When grade posting dates are configured, teachers cannot enter final grades before the start date or after the end date.
This helps institutions standardize grading timelines and prepare report cards on schedule.
An Exam is an assessment or evaluation that may be enabled for a marking period, depending on the institution’s setup.
When exam settings are enabled, exam-related grades or reporting options may become available for the selected marking period.
Teacher Comments are notes added by teachers to provide feedback about a student’s academic performance, progress, participation, or classroom behavior.
Marking period settings may determine whether teacher comments are enabled for report cards or academic reports.
A School Day is a date marked as an active instructional day in the academic calendar.
Attendance and class activities are usually recorded only on school days. If a date is not marked as a school day, attendance may not be expected for that date.
A Non-School Day is a date that is not counted as an instructional day.
Non-school days may include weekends, holidays, institutional breaks, or other closed dates.
A Holiday is a date marked as non-instructional in the school calendar.
Schools may use holidays to represent public holidays, institutional breaks, or special closure days.
Make Holiday School Day is an option used when an institution needs to treat a previously marked holiday as an active school day.
This may be useful when schools compensate for missed instructional days or update the calendar after schedule changes.
A Grade Level represents the academic stage of a student within the institution.
Examples:
Grade 1, Grade 5, Grade 12, Freshman, Sophomore, Undergraduate Year 1.
Grade levels affect student enrollment, scheduling, report cards, GPA calculations, promotion workflows, and academic reporting.
Grade Level Equivalency is a field within the Grade Level configuration that helps openSIS internally categorize the student’s academic stage.
It helps distinguish between K-12 and Higher Education contexts. This can influence parent portal access, reporting behavior, and certain institutional workflows.
Grade Level Equivalency is also useful when migrating data from another system or managing custom academic structures.
Next Grade is a Grade Level field that maps the current grade level to the grade level students will move into at the end of the school year.
This mapping is used during rollover and year-end processing to support student promotion without requiring manual updates for each student.
Example:
Grade 5 may be mapped to Grade 6 as the next grade.
A Section is a smaller group within a grade level or academic structure.
Schools may use sections to divide students into manageable groups.
Example:
Grade 5 may have Section A, Section B, and Section C.
Sections are often used for student grouping, class organization, filtering, and reporting.
A Cohort is a defined group of students who are tracked together for academic or administrative purposes.
Cohorts may be based on program, admission year, graduation year, academic batch, or institutional grouping.
Examples:
Class of 2028, Nursing Program Batch 2025, Undergraduate Intake 2026.
A Room represents a physical or virtual location where a class or activity takes place.
Rooms are commonly used during scheduling to assign course sections to specific locations.
Examples:
Room 101, Science Lab, Computer Lab, Online Class.
A Period is a defined instructional time block within the school day.
Periods may include a title, short name, start time, and end time. During setup, administrators may also define whether attendance should be taken during a specific period.
Periods can support different timetable models, including traditional schedules, block schedules, rotating schedules, advisory periods, and other instructional structures.
Example:
Period 1: 8:00 AM – 8:45 AM
Period 2: 8:50 AM – 9:35 AM
An Attendance-Enabled Period is a period where attendance is expected to be recorded.
Only attendance-enabled periods participate in absence tracking and attendance calculations when period-based attendance is used.
Full Day Minutes represent the total instructional minutes required for a full school day.
This value is important for attendance calculations, especially when attendance is based on instructional minutes.
Half Day Minutes represent the minimum instructional minutes required to count a day as a half day.
This helps the system determine whether a student’s attendance should be considered full day, half day, or absent based on attendance rules.
Calendar Rollover refers to carrying forward or recreating calendar-related settings for a new school year.
This helps institutions reduce repeated setup work when moving from one academic year to the next.
Rollover is the year-end process used to transition academic and operational data from the current school year to the next.
During rollover, students may advance to their mapped Next Grade, new academic structures may be prepared, and prior-year data remains available for historical records, transcripts, and reports.
Academic structure terms are connected to the core setup of openSIS. If the academic calendar, school year, marking periods, grade levels, periods, rooms, and rollover mappings are not configured correctly, later workflows such as scheduling, attendance, grading, report cards, transcripts, and reports may not work as expected.
A clear understanding of these terms helps administrators maintain accurate records and ensures that users work within the correct academic structure.