Calendar & sessions

Timetables

Build a weekly study timetable: answer four questions in Lay out the week — your days and hours, your subjects and how much of each, your activities, and any time that's blocked out — and AltEd lays the week out around the things that can't move. Then edit anything by dragging or right-clicking, colour it, caption it, undo it, and print it.

What it does

A timetable is your week on one grid. You tell AltEd:

• which days you study, and between which times — Monday to Friday, 9 to 3, or Tuesday and Thursday afternoons only;
• which subjects you teach, and how much each one matters — a weighting per subject;
• what can't move — meals, prayers, a swimming lesson, the school run, or time simply blocked out.

Press Set up → Lay out the week and a short wizard asks for all of that in order, showing what each weighting will actually come to in hours. At the end AltEd fills the free time with your subjects, in proportion to their weightings and around everything fixed. You can then drag anything anywhere — and Undo takes back any of your last ten changes.

Underneath the grid, two tables show how the week actually turned out: hours and percentage per subject, and hours and percentage per activity. The two add up to 100%, so you can see at a glance whether the week matches your intentions.

Timetables are personal to you: each guardian and each provider builds their own. Nobody else sees or edits yours.

Where to find it

• Navigation: Schedule → Timetables
• URL: /dashboard/timetables

Step by step

Create a timetable

1. Go to Timetables.
2. Type a name in New timetable — a term, a child, whatever you'll recognise ("Autumn term").
3. Optionally choose a Learner to attach it to.
4. Click Create. You land straight in the builder.

A new timetable starts on the study days, hours and period length of your most recent timetable for that learner — or your most recent of any — so a family's week only needs setting up once. Your very first starts on Monday to Friday, 09:00–15:00, with hour-long periods.

Change who a timetable is for

Beside the timetable's Name at the top of the builder, Learner says who it is for. Choose another learner to move it to them, or No learner to keep it for nobody in particular; the change saves straight away and says so. A timetable that is for a learner appears on their card on your home page (Timetable, or Timetables (2) when they have several) and in the trail above the page.

A timetable built from curriculum plans takes the plans' learner when they share one. If you built one from a plan with no learner chosen, it is for nobody: your home page says 1 timetable isn't for any learner yet — choose who it's for, which opens the list at No learner. Open it and choose the Learner. You can offer only the learners you can see — your own children, or a family's children while you are connected to them.

Build a timetable from curriculum plans

The builder's last step lays the week out for you by default — tick Lay the week out as a timetable too and you land here straight after the plan is built. If you have built curriculum plans already (see Curriculum builder), click From curriculum plans at the top of the Timetables list. Tick the plans you want in the week — each shows the hours it needs a week to finish on time — name the timetable and click Build timetable. Each plan becomes a subject weighted by its weekly need, a study window and period length are proposed from the total, and the week is laid out before you arrive in the builder. From the curriculum builder's last step you can also set the new week's study days, activities and blocked-out time first, or build on a copy of one of your timetables — see Curriculum builder.

A timetable built from plans carries a banner at the top — Built from the curriculum plan … with Back to the plan (or one button per plan) — so the curriculum you came from is one click away. Subjects built this way also carry a line under their name — "From the plan … · needs 3h 57m/week" — so you can see where the weighting came from. You can still change the weighting, the days, and everything else; the plan is where the number came from, not a lock.

Combine timetables

On Timetables, Combine timetables (shown once you have two or more) makes one week out of several, in five steps:

1. Timetables — tick two or more, give the week a Name (their names joined, if you leave it empty) and, optionally, a Learner. The timetables you choose are only read; nothing on them changes.
2. Study days — filled in from the ones you chose: every day any of them uses, from the earliest start to the latest finish. Change any day, or use Copy study days from to take one of theirs.
3. Recurrence — Intense, Focused or Scattered, and the Period length.
4. Blocked time & activities — every activity and blocked-out time on the chosen timetables, grouped by timetable and ticked to keep. Untick anything the combined week shouldn't have, or Add your own. Something that clashes with a time already kept on the same day is left out, and the step says which.
5. Combine — shows how much of the week is left for subjects once those are placed, and what each subject had in each timetable (and what its curriculum plan needs). A subject in more than one timetable becomes one subject. With Decide the shares with AI on (about 3 credits), AI weighs all of that and shares out the week; without it, each subject keeps the most any timetable gave it, trimmed in proportion if the week is short, with curriculum plans' needs kept first. Click Combine with AI — or Combine timetables — and you land on the new timetable.

You can also start from a timetable itself: Combine with another timetable, at the top of a timetable's page (shown once you have another), opens the wizard with that timetable already chosen — pick the others to combine it with.

In the Blocked time & activities step, the activities and blocked-out time of the timetables you're combining are listed to keep or untick. If your other timetables — the ones not being combined — have any, From your timetables beside Add an activity and Block out time copies one of theirs into the combined week, grouped by timetable; each copy can be changed or removed before you combine.

Set the study days and hours

The grid gets the whole width of the screen. Above it sit Study days (with how many you have) and Undo. The study days are also the first step of Lay out the week; the button is here too because you will change the hours more often than anything else.

Open Study days:

1. Use the switch beside a day to turn it on or off.
2. Set the start and finish time for each day with the two time boxes.
3. Choose a Period length — how long each generated lesson is (20 minutes to 2 hours).
4. Choose a Grid step — how finely you can position things when you drag (5 to 30 minutes).
5. Or use Copy study days from at the top to take another of your timetables' days, hours, period length and grid step — that learner's timetables first, then your others below a divider.

There's no Save button. Every change is stored as you make it, and the panel closes with Escape or the ×.

Start earlier or finish later by dragging the edge of the week

You can change the hours without opening the panel. A faint line runs along the very top and the very bottom of the week, with a small grip in the middle. Hover it and it shows the current start or finish time.

1. Drag the top line up to start earlier, or down to start later. Drag the bottom line down to finish later, or up to finish earlier.
2. The line moves a whole hour at a time, and every study day moves by the same amount — a Friday that finishes early keeps finishing early.
3. While you drag, the new time shows on the line (for example Starts 08:00 · 1h earlier) and in each day's heading.
4. Hours you are adding are shaded green. Hours you are taking away are shaded red, and so are the periods in them: a period that would be shortened is outlined in amber and drawn at the length it would keep; one that would be removed is red and struck through.
5. Let go.

If you only added time, the change is saved straight away. If the change would shorten or remove any periods, nothing happens until you answer Change the study hours? — it lists what would be Shortened (with the old and new times) and what would be Removed, separately. Choose Change hours (or Change hours and remove) to go ahead, or Keep the current hours to leave everything as it was.

A pinned period stops the line: you can't drag the start past a pinned period or the finish before one. A study day is never left shorter than an hour.

Lay out the week

Click Set up at the top right and choose Lay out the week (the grid icon). A window opens with four numbered steps along the top — Study days, Subjects, Activities and Blocked out — the same steps as the curriculum builder's: the current one is circled, the ones ahead are greyed until you reach them, and a step you have finished gets a tick (click it to go back). Move on with Next and back with Back; Next won't leave a step that has something wrong with it, and the step says what. Nothing is saved until you press Lay out the week on the last step, so Cancel (or closing the window) leaves the timetable exactly as it was.

1. Study days

The same switches, times, Period length, Grid step and Copy study days from as the Study days panel (see above).

2. Subjects

Each subject has a colour circle, its name, a weighting slider (0 to 100) with the number beside it, and — the part that matters — what that weighting comes to: its percentage of the subject time and roughly how many hours a week it will get, for example 60.2% · ≈ 18h a week.

• Weightings are relative. A subject weighted 60 gets twice the time of one weighted 30; only the ratio matters. 100 against 66 and 50 against 33 give the same week.
• The box at the top says how much time is left for subjects once your activities and blocked-out time are in place, and the hours on each row update as you change any of them — including the activities and blocked-out times in the next two steps.
• Type a name into Add a subject… and press Enter (or click +). It suggests AltEd's subjects, grouped, as you type — choose one with the arrow keys and Enter, or the mouse — and keeps anything else you write. From your other timetables brings across one of their subjects.
• Set a weighting to 0 to leave a subject out of the week without deleting it — the row says Left out of the week.
• The bin removes a subject, with its periods, when you lay out the week.

Under the subjects, How a subject repeats chooses the recurrence:

3. Activities

Activities are the fixed points your week is built around — lunch, prayers, the morning jobs, a swimming lesson. They are pinned: the week is laid out around them and nothing moves them.

1. Click Add an activity and give it a name (and a colour, with the circle).
2. Choose its days — click the day buttons, or Weekdays, Weekend or Every day — and its start and finish times.
3. If it happens at different times on different days, click Add another time and give that time its own days.

For example: Swimming on Sat, 14:00 to 15:00; Morning job every day, 08:45 to 09:00; Exercise Mon–Fri 12:00 to 12:30, plus a second time on Sat and Sun 14:00 to 14:30. The activities already on your grid are listed here when you open the wizard, one row each with all their times. From your other timetables copies one of theirs (joining an activity of the same name if you have one).

A time on a day that isn't a study day is left out, and anything outside the study hours is trimmed — the row says so. If a time lands on a lesson you have pinned, or on an activity listed above it, a note says won't fit and which, and that one time is left out.

4. Blocked out

Time that isn't free for study at all — an appointment, the school run. It works exactly like activities: Block out time, a name, a colour, and as many times as it needs. A blocked-out time left as Blocked out shows as plain blocked-out time on the grid.

The last step sums up what will happen. Press Lay out the week: your study days, subjects, activities and blocked-out times are saved together, the activities and blocked-out times are placed and pinned, and the subjects are shared out across the rest by weighting. Subject periods you haven't pinned are replaced; pinned ones stay. If something isn't right — no study days, no subject with a weighting above zero, a missing name, two entries with one name — you are taken to the step that holds it, and it says what to change.

The timetable through the year

On the Family and Provider plans. A timetable is one week that repeats. Set up the year turns it into dated weeks — each labelled with the Monday it commences, holidays taken out, and each week's topics in place.

1. Click Set up at the top right of the timetable and choose Set up the year (the calendar icon) — Change the year once it is set up.
2. Dates — the Start date and End date. It says how many weeks that is, from which week commencing to which. A timetable built from curriculum plans starts on the plans' own dates; Use the plan's dates puts them back if you change them.
3. Hours a week — the same study days, times, period length and grid step as Study days, with the total a week above them. Changing the hours here doesn't move any periods; lay out the week again to fill new time.
4. Breaks — holidays, half terms, weeks away, exactly as a curriculum plan has them: From, To and a Reason, then Add break, or Copy breaks from one of your plans. A timetable built from plans starts with the plans' breaks. A week a break covers most of (four days or more) has no study in it.
5. Review — the dates, how many study weeks and weeks off, the hours a week and across the year, the breaks, and where the topics come from. Click Set up the year (or Save the year).

Once the year is set up, a row of weeks sits above the grid. It opens on this week (marked Now); scroll along it, or use the arrows (and ← → on the keyboard) to go a week back or forward, and This week to come back. Each week says its week commencing (w/c 5 Oct) and its number among the study weeks (Week 5) — or the break that takes it out (Half term). Under the row, the week in view is written out in full: Week commencing Monday 5 October 2026 · Week 5 of 38. Every week, at the start of the row, is the pattern itself.

What each week shows. A subject built from a curriculum plan shows that week's topics on its periods, from the plan's own pacing — a book icon marks them. Several topics in a week are shared across the subject's periods in order, by time. A week off is shaded with its break — Half term — no study this week — and shows no topics.

Your own topic for a week. In a dated week, a caption you write — by double-clicking the caption, from the pencil's Caption for w/c 5 Oct, or from Caption for w/c 5 Oct in the right-click menu — is for that week only, and is marked with a calendar icon. Clear it to leave that week's period without a caption; Use the usual caption this week, in the pencil's panel, takes your own back off. Moving, resizing, renaming and recolouring a period still change every week — the week is the pattern. On Every week, a caption is the period's usual one, shown in any week that has nothing else.

Your learner sees the same weeks. On their own page, Timetable opens on this week with the same row of weeks to step through, and each period shows what it's for that week — your caption for the week, the plan's topic, or the usual caption. A week off is shaded with its break. Today on their page shows today's periods with today's topics. They see it while your plan includes the year. See The learner's own page.

The topics come from each plan's own pacing. Changing the timetable's breaks doesn't re-pace a plan; to move a plan's topics around a different holiday, change the breaks on the plan.

Don't need dates any more? Set up → Change the year → Go back to a single week. The holidays go; captions you wrote for particular weeks are kept, in case you set the year up again — Undo leaves them alone, and any of them can still be cleared.

On the Free plan, Set up the year in the Set up menu is marked Family; choosing it says what it does and how to upgrade. A timetable built from plans on Free keeps the plans' dates — upgrade and its weeks are there.

Edit the grid by hand

Everything on the grid is direct — drag it, or right-click it.

• Move a period: drag it. Up and down changes the time; left and right changes the day. Drop it on time that is already taken and what is in the way makes room: the period underneath shrinks to the side, and disappears if there is no usable slot left either side. Anything about to go is outlined in red and struck through before you let go.
• Change its length: drag its top or bottom edge. Drag it into the next period and that period shortens to make room; back off and it grows again, up to the length it started at. A pinned period won't be pushed — your drag stops at its edge instead.
• Repeat it across the week: hover a period and a small grip appears on its right-hand edge. Drag that sideways across the following days and it is copied into each one at the same time, with the same name and caption. Whatever is already at that hour is replaced — and highlighted first so you can see what you are about to lose. A day held by a pinned period is skipped instead.
• Add a period: click empty time and choose what goes there — Subjects, Activities and Unavailable are offered in one list, with the times you are filling shown at the top. Drag across empty time first if you want a particular span rather than one whole period.
• Add something new while you're there: each group in that list has a +. Type a name and press Enter — a new subject, activity, or named unavailable time ("Dentist") — and it goes straight into the slot.
• Rename it, or give it a caption: double-click the name to rename it, or double-click the caption to change that. Both boxes open together — the name and, under it, the caption, a second line for a topic, a room number or a code. Press Enter (or click away) to save, Escape to cancel.
• Change what it is, its colour or its caption: hover it and click the pencil. The panel shows its colour circle, a Caption box, and the same grouped list with its current choice ticked — plus a + on each group.
• Pin one: hover it and click the pin. A pinned period's pin is filled in and highlighted; click it again to unpin. Pinned periods survive Lay out the week, and cannot be pushed aside by a resize.
• Remove one: hover it and click the ×.

Every small button has a tooltip, and fills with colour as you point at it, so you can see which one you're about to press.

A period never spills outside the day's hours, and while you drag it stays at the last position it could legally take. Press Escape mid-drag to abandon the move and put everything back.

Click to enlargeTap to enlarge

Right-click for more

Right-click (or long-press, on a touch screen) anywhere on the week.

• On a period: Change what this is…, Rename, Add a caption (or Edit the caption), Colour, Set a task… (on a learner's timetable), Pin in place or Unpin, and Remove.
• On empty time: the day and times you clicked, Add here…, and Subject, Activity and Unavailable — each listing what you have, to drop straight in, or New … to add one.
• On either: Undo and what it would take back, when there is something to undo.

Colours

Click a colour circle — in the pencil's panel, beside an entry in Lay out the week, or under Colour in the right-click menu — to choose from six colours (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple) in five strengths each, from subtle to strong. Each swatch shows its fill, its border and "Aa" in the text colour it will use, which is chosen so the name stays readable — in light mode and in dark mode alike. No colour clears it.

A colour belongs to the subject or activity, so choosing one recolours every period of it at once. Unavailable time takes its colour by name: recolour one Dentist and every Dentist changes.

Undo

Undo, beside Study days, takes back your last change — a move, a resize, a removal, a colour, a caption, the study hours, even a whole Lay out the week. Press it again to go further back, up to ten changes. The arrow beside it lists them, newest first; choose one to undo it and everything after it. ⌘Z (Mac) or Ctrl+Z does the same, and Undo is in the right-click menu too. A period you removed comes back as itself, caption and all — its captions for particular weeks too, even if your plan no longer includes Set up the year.

The list lasts while the page is open; reloading the page starts it afresh.

Without a mouse

Tab to a period, then:

Tab to the top or bottom edge of the week, then press ↑ or ↓ to move it an hour. The same question appears if the change would shorten or remove periods.

Print it or save it as a PDF

Click Print or save as PDF. The controls drop away and you get the timetable's name and the learner it's for at the top, then the grid and both weighting tables. In the print dialog, choose your printer — or choose "Save as PDF" as the destination to keep a copy.

With the year set up and a dated week in view, a small window asks what to print first:

• This week only — the week in view, as it is on screen, with its week commencing at the top.
• This week and every week after it — every study week from this one to the end of the year, a page each, each headed with its week commencing and showing that week's topics. Breaks are left out. Family and Provider plans; on other plans the choice is shown switched off, and only the week in view prints.

A learner with their own page can print their own copy the same way, from Timetable there — see The learner's own page.

Delete a timetable

You can delete a timetable you no longer want, from either place:

• On the Timetables list: click … at the top right of its card and choose Delete timetable.
• On the timetable itself: click … beside Print or save as PDF and choose Delete timetable.

AltEd asks once, naming the timetable. Choose Delete timetable to go ahead, or Keep it.

• Deleted with it: its subjects, periods, breaks and dated weeks. If it was for a learner, it also leaves their page.
• Not deleted: tasks you set from its periods stay on Progress, and the curriculum plans it was built from are untouched.

Deleting can't be undone. A timetable built from curriculum plans can be built again from them with From curriculum plans.

What each screen shows

The Timetables list shows a card per timetable with its learner, its study days and hours, and how many subjects and slots it holds. The … on each card has Delete timetable. Once any timetable names a learner, a row of chips above the cards — All, then a chip per learner with their count — shows one learner's timetables at a time, and No learner the ones that are for nobody (their cards say No learner — open it to choose one). A learner's card on the guardian home page leads here already filtered (Timetables (2)) when they have more than one; with one, it opens that timetable.

The builder has three parts:

• The toolbar — the timetable's Name and Learner, then Study days and Undo. Everything else the week depends on is under Set up, at the top right: Lay out the week (the days, subjects and fixed times every week repeats) and Set up the year (the dates, hours and holidays that turn it into dated weeks). Print or save as PDF sits beside it. … beside that holds Delete timetable. With the year set up, the row of weeks sits just above the grid.
• The grid — days across, time down, using the full width. Each slot shows its name, its caption under it, and its start and finish times. The three kinds are drawn differently: subjects have a book icon, activities a cup icon and a dashed left edge, blocked-out time is hatched with a "no entry" icon. A colour fills the slot with a matching border; without one, a subject is a plain tint. A filled pin in the corner marks a pinned slot. Hatched areas are outside your study hours. Days that still hold work but are no longer study days are shown too, marked "Not a study day", so nothing is ever hidden.
• Weightings — the two summary tables. On the grid is the portion of the scheduled week a subject or activity has now; Weighting asks is the share its weighting is asking for. They are rarely identical — the week is built from whole periods — but when they have drifted further apart than that (usually because a weighting changed since the week was laid out), a note says The grid no longer matches the weightings, with a Lay out the week button. Time you blocked out isn't scheduled time, so it's reported separately underneath.

Tips and good to know

• A weighting only reaches the grid when the week is laid out. The wizard shows what each weighting will come to; the note under Weightings tells you when the grid has drifted from them.
• If a subject keeps landing where you don't want it, put it where you do and pin it. Laying out again leaves pinned periods alone and shares out what's left.
• Weightings are read against the whole week, not just the empty part — so a subject holding two pinned periods is given correspondingly less of the remaining time.
• A period length that doesn't divide your day leaves a shorter period at the end rather than a scrap. Those short slots are shared out by minutes, not by count, so nobody is short-changed by landing on one.
• Turning a study day off doesn't delete anything on it. The column stays, marked "Not a study day", until you move or remove the periods.
• A finer Grid step makes the grid taller, not just more precise — a ten-minute period has to be tall enough to grab by its edges, so the whole week zooms in to keep it usable.
• Removing a subject in Lay out the week also removes its periods from the grid — and Undo brings both back.
• Captions belong to one period. Repeating a period across the week copies its caption; changing one later changes only that one.
• A timetable holds up to 60 subjects and activities, 1,000 periods and 5,000 week captions — far more than any real week or year. Lay out the week, Build on one of your timetables and Combine timetables refuse one past those limits and say so, and a week's caption past the last one asks you to clear some you no longer need.

Troubleshooting

Set a task from a period

When a timetable belongs to a learner, hovering a subject period shows a small button beside the pencil and the pin — Set a task for this day (also Set a task… in the right-click menu). The task pane opens on the right, over the timetable, half-filled in: the period's subject, repeating on that weekday from this Monday, linked back to the period. Finish the title, add a link to the paper or the guide, and save it — you stay on the timetable, and Open Progress in the message that follows takes you to the learner's tasks. See Progress — the tracker.

Related guides

• Progress — the tracker

• Calendar — the shared, dated calendar of real events, which is a different thing from a repeating weekly plan.
• Assignments — the work you set against the lessons in your timetable.
• Reports — the printable education record, including hours by subject.