Pause pupils' accounts for the school holidays

5 min read Updated 6 November 2026

If you switch pupils' accounts off while school is closed, use a holiday pause rather than suspending them. You list the dates once, as many as you like (every holiday in the school year, for example), and Realsmart switches pupils' sign-in to Realsmart, Google and Microsoft off on the first day and back on after the last.

Don't suspend pupils for a holiday. Suspended means someone has left: it takes them out of all their groups, your MIS sync sets them back to active (so you'd have to turn MIS sync off), and at the end you can't reactivate just the pupils you suspended without also reactivating real leavers. A pause does none of that.

What a pause does

While a pupil is paused:

they can't sign in to Realsmart, and anyone already signed in is signed out;
their Google account is suspended and their Microsoft account is disabled, so they can't sign in to either;
they stay Active in Realsmart, in all their groups and Google Classrooms, in the same organisational unit, with the same licences;
your MIS sync keeps running as normal, so pupils who join, leave or change class are still kept up to date. You don't need to turn it off.

When the dates end, their sign-in comes back on its own. Only the pupils the pause switched off are switched back on, so someone you've suspended because they left stays suspended.

A pause doesn't change Active Directory or Apple School Manager, so it doesn't stop pupils signing in to school computers on your network.

Pauses are for pupils only. Staff are never paused.

Add a holiday pause

In the left sidebar, open Users (under Users & Groups), select Holiday pauses, then select Add a holiday pause. You need the Manage users & groups permission.
Give it a name, such as School holidays 2026–27.
Leave All pupils on, or turn it off and tick the year groups to pause (they're listed as Year 7, Year 8 and so on, from your pupils' year groups, with Nursery and Reception by name). The editor says how many pupils the plan covers today.
Under Dates, enter the Start date and End date of a holiday. Both days are included. Select Add dates for each further holiday (up to 50 sets of dates in one plan).
Leave Pause on these dates on. Turn it off if you want to keep the plan without pausing anyone yet.
Select Save holiday pause. A message says "Holiday pause saved." and how many pupils were paused.

If today falls within one of the dates, those pupils are paused straight away. Otherwise they're paused from the start of the first day, by your school's clock. Pupils who join a paused year group later are paused too. Only Active pupils are paused: pupils who are suspended, deleted or Locked aren't.

See who is paused

Holiday pauses (under Users) shows each plan, who it covers, its dates and whether it's pausing anyone now. Each plan has a badge: Paused until {date}, Next: {dates}, No dates to come or Switched off. Dates that have passed are crossed out.

On the Users page, paused pupils have a Paused badge beside their status. To list them, select Filters → Holiday pause → Paused now. On a pupil's Logs tab, a pause shows as "Holiday pause started (plan name): Google and Microsoft sign-in paused", and its end as "Holiday pause ended: Google and Microsoft sign-in back on".

End a pause early, change it or delete it

Resume now (shown while a pause is running) ends today's pause straight away after you confirm. The plan's later dates still apply.
Edit changes the name, the year groups or the dates. Your changes apply as soon as you save. A year group the plan already has but no pupil is in any more stays in the list, ticked, marked No pupils in it now, so you can still save the plan. Untick it to take it off.
To keep a plan but stop it pausing anyone, edit it and turn off Pause on these dates.
Delete removes the plan after you confirm. Anyone it has paused gets their sign-in back.

Realsmart sign-in changes straight away. Changes reach Google and Microsoft within a few minutes. If your cloud sync is paused for the summer (a Cloud sync is paused banner shows on the Users page), pausing and resuming still switch Realsmart sign-in on and off straight away, but Google and Microsoft only change once sync resumes — see Cloud sync is paused.

Troubleshooting

What pupils see. A paused pupil who tries to sign in to Realsmart sees "Your school has paused sign-in for the holidays. You can sign in again when the holiday ends."
Give the plan a name, such as "School holidays 2026–27". — the Name box is empty.
"Add at least one set of dates.", "Choose a start date.", "Choose an end date." — each date row needs both dates.
"The end date can't be before the start date." — swap the dates.
"Choose at least one year group, or pause all pupils." — you turned off All pupils but ticked no year groups.
"None of your pupils has a year group yet, so you can only pause all pupils." — year groups come from your MIS. Until pupils have one, use All pupils.
The pause didn't start. Check the plan's badge: Switched off means Pause on these dates is off, and Next: … means the first date hasn't arrived yet in your school's time. Check the pupil is Active and, for a year-group plan, in one of the ticked year groups.
Holiday pauses says "Choose a school". You're in MAT overview. Pick a school from the switcher in the top bar: pauses are set per school.
Staff are paused too. They aren't: pauses only ever apply to pupils.

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