The following chart demonstrates the distribution of students across school terms. The chart shows two boundaries within which most students fall. The first represents students who successfully complete 36 terms without taking any holiday during their study (as shown in the chart by a black square) thus completing the school stages in 9 years, the minimum time period to complete the 3 school stages. The other boundary represents a student who take one study term yearly for holiday (as shown by the gray square) while passing all terms; hence he completes the school stages in 12 Hijri years. Most students fall between these two boundaries (as shown by the diagonal squares).

As for students who cannot complete the school stages in 12 years for any reasons e.g. illness, repeated failure or otherwise, they are allowed to remain in school until they attain 20 years of age. The last column of the chart (from 17 to 20 years) covers this situation.