Academic foundation

Academic system, year, terms, classes, subjects, classrooms and books - the build order and which of them are year-scoped.

Platform & access guide for day and boarding schools.

Last updated August 29, 2026

The academic foundation defines how the school structures time and curriculum, and it is the first thing to build on a new deployment. Everything downstream points at it: attendance at a class, grades at a subject, the timetable at a classroom, fees at a class and a year. Build it in the order below, because creating classes before the academic year exists, or importing students before the classes do, means going back and reassigning records one at a time.

What is scoped to a year and what is not

This distinction explains most of the surprises. Academic years, terms, fee structures, syllabus rows and teacher assignments are held per year. Classes, subjects, classrooms and curriculum books are not - the same class 10-A record serves every year, and its student membership changes rather than the class being recreated. That is why the rollover wizard copies fee structures, syllabus and teacher assignments but never touches classes, and why editing a class name changes it retrospectively across every past year.

Screens

Screen	Path	Purpose	Who may change it
Academic system	/academic-system	The board template the year is built from	Platform Admin only
Academic year	/academic-year	Create a year, set its dates, mark it current	Platform Admin only
Year detail	/academic-year/[id]	Terms, boundaries and status for one year	Platform Admin only
Year rollover	/academic-year/rollover	Copy fee structures, syllabus and teacher assignments into the next year	Run button shown to Platform Admin
Classes	/classes	Grade sections such as 10-A, with capacity and class teachers	Platform Admin, Principal, Vice Principal
Subjects	/subjects	The subject master with codes	Platform Admin, Principal, Vice Principal
Classrooms	/classrooms	Physical rooms for the timetable; the same screen as /infrastructure	Classroom management roles
Books	/books	The curriculum book catalogue, filtered by grade, board and subject	Curriculum book roles

Build order

Pick the academic system, because the year is created against it and the board profile preset reads from the same choice.
Create the academic year and mark it current. Exactly one year should carry that flag; several modules refuse to act when the invariant is broken.
Add the terms. Nothing generates them and reporting periods depend on them.
Create subjects, then classes, then set the class teacher and co-class teacher on each class.
Add classrooms before generating a timetable, and curriculum books before linking them to subjects.
Only then import students and staff, so every person lands in a class or an assignment that already exists.

Common questions

Quick answers in plain language.

Do I create a new set of classes each academic year?+

No. Classes are not scoped to a year, so 10-A is a single record that persists. What changes each year is the student membership, the class teacher fields, and the teacher assignments and fee structures that point at it. Creating parallel copies per year would break the reports that group by class.

Why does the classrooms link open the infrastructure screen?+

They are the same page. /classrooms re-exports /infrastructure, which is the room master used by timetable generation and classroom utilisation reporting. It records the rooms themselves - it is not a maintenance or work-order log.

Who can create classes and subjects?+

Viewing the master lists is open to Platform Admin, Principal, Vice Principal and an office Admin, and teachers can still read them through pickers elsewhere. Creating or editing them is limited to Platform Admin, Principal and Vice Principal. Academic years and the academic system are stricter again - Platform Admin only.