Quick Start

Get your school up and running in under 30 minutes. This guide walks you through the minimum steps to onboard students and generate your first report cards.

Setup Steps

Report Cards

Report cards are the core output of schoolsio. Each report card is a locked snapshot of a student's performance for a specific term — with per-subject scores, grades, class position, teacher comments, and signatures.

Report Card Lifecycle

Every report card moves through the following states:

Controlling Parent Access

You can control how parents and students access report cards via Settings → Result Access Mode:

Subject Summaries

Each report card contains a subjectSummaries array — one entry per subject the student was assessed in. Each entry includes:

Scratch Cards

Scratch cards let your school monetize result access. Each card has a unique serial and PIN that unlocks a student's report card for a specific term. Revenue is split automatically between your school and the platform via Paystack.

Two Purchase Flows

Creating a Batch

Revenue Split

schoolsio retains a platform fee on each card sale. You set your school's split percentage under Settings → Paystack → Scratch Card Split % (default: 90% to your school, 10% to platform).

Card Statuses

Promotion Engine

The promotion engine automates year-end class advancement. It reads cumulative report cards, routes students to their next class arm, handles cross-section transitions, and creates enrollment records for the new academic year.

How promotion paths are resolved

The engine never uses manually configured paths. It always derives the next class from classOrder and sectionOrder:

Arm Matching

Arms are always matched by name. A student in JSS 2A will be placed in JSS 3A. If the destination class is missing that arm:

Cross-Section Transitions

Moving from one section to another (e.g. Primary → JSS) is a significant event. You control how this is approved:

School Setup

Configure your school's identity, branding, term structure, grading scale, and portal settings from the Settings dashboard.

Basic Information

Navigate to Settings → School Profile to update your school's name, short name, address, phone, motto, logo, and brand colors. Your primaryColor is the single source of truth for app and website theming.

Term Configuration

Under Settings → Academic you can configure:

Portal Access Settings

Control which user types can log in to the platform:

Roles & Permissions

schoolsio uses a role-based access control system. Each user is assigned one or more roles, and roles can be scoped to specific sections or departments.

Available Roles

Class Structure

schoolsio uses a four-level hierarchy: Sections → Classes → Class Arms → Academic Classes. This structure separates your school's permanent organisation from the per-year, per-term instances.

Sections

Sections are the top-level academic divisions — e.g. Primary, Junior Secondary (JSS), Senior Secondary (SSS). Each section has a sectionOrder that determines promotion flow.

Classes & Arms

Within each section, create classes (e.g. "Primary 1", "JSS 2"). Within each class, create arms (e.g. "A", "B", "Science", "Arts"). Arms can optionally be linked to a department for subject tracking.

Academic Classes

At the start of each term, schoolsio auto-generates Academic Classes — one per arm per term. These are the live instances where attendance is marked, assessments are assigned, and scores are entered. You never need to recreate your structure each year.

Subjects & Electives

Subjects can be core (offered to all students in a class or section) or elective (student must actively enroll). Electives are grouped into elective groups where students pick one subject from the group.

Core Subjects

Core subjects have no electiveGroupId and are automatically included in every student's report card. Examples: Mathematics, English Language, Basic Science.

Elective Groups

Create an elective group (e.g. "Modern Languages") and assign subjects to it (French, Arabic, Yoruba). Set maxSelections = 1 to allow students to pick exactly one. Students select their electives once when they enter a new section.

Assessments

Assessments define the components of a student's subject score — CA1, CA2, Mid-Term, Final Exam, etc. You configure these once via Assessment Templates, and schoolsio auto-generates the individual assessment rows for every subject at the start of each term.

Assessment Templates

Go to Academic → Assessment Templates. Create a template set for your school (or per-section if Primary uses different components than Secondary). Each template item has a name, type, weightPercent, and maxScore. All weights in a set must sum to 100.

Entering Scores

Teachers navigate to their assigned class, open the subject, and enter scores per student. A student's final subject score is the weighted sum of all component scores. The system validates that entered scores do not exceed the component's maxScore.

Cumulative Reports

Cumulative report cards are generated at the end of the final term of an academic year. They average all per-term scores for the same student and year, and determine whether a student is promoted, placed on trial, or requires review.

Promotion Status

Attendance

Track daily student attendance per academic class. Attendance data feeds into the report card and can surface absentee alerts for class teachers and admins.

Marking Attendance

Class teachers open their class for the day and mark each student as present, absent, late, or excused. Once saved, attendance for that day is locked to prevent backdating.

Students

Each student has a full profile with personal details, a unique admission number, family links, medical notes, and a complete enrollment history across all terms and years.

Admission Numbers

Admission numbers are auto-generated when a student is created. The format is configurable in Settings → Academic. Default: STU/2024/00001. You can also set custom formats like GFA/2024/T1/0042 using the template variables.

Enrollment Status

Staff

Staff members are users with a staffProfile. They are assigned roles that determine what they can see and do in the platform. Each staff member can have a signature image that auto-appears on report cards they are the class teacher for.

Class Teacher Assignment

Each academic class has one class teacher. The class teacher automatically inherits all subjects in that class that don't have an explicit subject teacher assigned. They also appear on report cards with their signature when autoSignSignatureForPrincipal is enabled.

Parents & Families

Parents are linked to students through Family records. One family can contain multiple students (siblings) and multiple parents. Notifications and fees can be targeted at the family level.

Family Linking

Create a family first, then link student profiles and parent profiles to it. This allows a single parent login to view all their children's report cards from one account.

Fee Management

Create fee structures, target them at specific groups or classes, auto-generate invoices, and collect payments via Paystack, bank transfer, cash, or POS. Coming in Stage 2.

Paystack Setup

Connect your Paystack subaccount to automatically receive your share of scratch card and fee payments. You only need to do this once per school.

Getting your Subaccount Code

Website Builder

Every school on schoolsio gets a fully customizable public website — no coding required. Configure your hero, about section, features, gallery, blog, events, testimonials, and admissions enquiry form from the admin dashboard.

Publishing Your Website

Go to Website → Settings and toggle isPublished to on. Your site will be live at yourschool.schoolsio.com. You can also point a custom domain by entering it in the customDomain field.

Brand Colors

Your website always uses schools.primaryColor as its brand color — the same one you set in School Profile. You never need to configure it separately for the website.

Blog & Events

Publish news, announcements, and event listings on your school's public website. Blog posts can be authored by staff, and optionally by parents or alumni after moderation.

Admissions Page

Configure your school's public admissions section — process steps, requirements, tuition overview, and an enquiry form that captures prospective parent contact details.

Notifications

schoolsio sends notifications via in-app, push, email, and SMS channels. You control which channels are active and who receives each notification type.

Notification Types

Certificates

Design and issue PDF completion certificates to graduating students. Certificates include your school branding, custom text, signature slots, a stamp image, and a QR code for public verification.

Certificate Configs

Create one or more certificate templates under Settings → Certificates. Each config controls page size, orientation, background image, fonts, colors, logo position, signature slots, and the body text template. Use {{studentName}}, {{schoolName}}, and {{academicYear}} as placeholders in the body text.

Settings Reference

A full reference of all configurable settings available in your school's Settings dashboard.

schoolSettings fields