School structure¶
Who does this: Academic Administrator Where: School → School Structure How often: Once, then adjusted as the school grows
The structure is the school's shape: the grades it teaches, the classes inside each grade, the subjects those classes study, and the rooms, houses and departments around them.
Grades¶
A grade is a year of schooling — KG1, Grade 4, Grade 9.
The school arrives with twelve grades already set up, KG1 to KG3 and Grade 1 to Grade 9, and each one records which grade follows it. That chain is what makes promotion a matter of pressing a button rather than a matter of somebody remembering the order. The chain ends at the school's final grade.
Check the chain matches the school and correct it if it does not. A circular chain — where a grade eventually leads back to itself — is refused.
Sections¶
A section is an actual class: Grade 4 A, Grade 4 B.
Three things are required on every section:
| Grade | The grade it belongs to |
| Capacity | How many children it seats. Used when an enrollment is confirmed. |
| Gender | Which gender the class takes |
Gender has no default, on purpose
Whoever creates a section has to state which gender it takes rather than inherit a guess. The system then refuses to place a child in a section of the opposite gender — at enrolment, at promotion, and in any bulk reallocation. In a school that teaches boys and girls separately this is a safeguarding control, not a tidiness rule, and there is no screen anywhere that can be configured around it.
Each section also names its class teacher, once staff are in the system. The class teacher is who leave requests are routed to.
Subjects¶
For each subject, record:
- Which grades study it. This is the school's curriculum map, and it is used later to refuse a teaching assignment that makes no sense — Chemistry to a Grade 2 section.
- Whether it is examinable. An examinable subject earns a row on a report card; a non-examinable one does not.
A subject with no grades listed is treated as unconstrained. That is master data nobody has filled in yet, not a statement that the subject is taught nowhere.
Departments¶
Academic departments — Science, Languages, Islamic Studies — each with a head of department once staff exist.
These are the school's academic departments. They are deliberately kept separate from the administrative departments used for payroll and reporting lines, because the two rarely match: a teacher may sit in the Science department academically and report to a different line manager.
Houses¶
House membership, for schools that run a house system. A child's house is recorded on their file and used for events and competitions.
Classrooms¶
Physical rooms, with their capacity. Used by the timetable when it arrives, and useful immediately as a record of what the school has.
When to change the structure, and when not to¶
| Change | Safe? |
|---|---|
| Adding a section because the intake grew | Yes, any time |
| Adding a subject | Yes, any time |
| Raising a section's capacity | Yes |
| Lowering a section's capacity below the children already in it | The system will let you save it, but the next enrolment into that class will be refused as full |
| Changing a section's gender once children are in it | Don't. Move the children first — the placement rule is checked when an enrollment is confirmed, not retrospectively |
| Renaming a grade mid-year | Safe, but the old name disappears from historical screens, because the name is not copied onto past records |