ZamSkools · Academic Setup

School Configuration Guide

How to set your school’s academic structure — education levels, subjects, classes and streams — so that the right subjects land on the right classes, automatically.

7-step setup Core & Options Streams by section Secondary · Primary · ECE

Start here

One idea holds the whole thing together

A class never gets its subjects one-by-one. It inherits them from a stream — a section letter within an education phase. Set a stream’s subjects once, and every class in that section carries them.


The setup wizard

Seven steps, in order

The wizard saves after every step, so you can leave and return. By the end of step 4 your classes already exist with subjects attached — you never map subjects to classes by hand.

  1. School details

    Name, contact, logo, and curriculum type (new or old). Everything downstream is scoped to this school.

  2. Education levels

    Tick the phases you run — Early Childhood, Primary, O-Level, A-Level. This decides which template subjects and grades you’ll be offered.

  3. Subjects

    Pick from the ready-made subject list for your levels. Compulsory subjects are pre-ticked. Mark your core subjects as compulsory here — it decides what seeds onto new classes.

  4. Classes

    For each grade, choose how many sections and name them. Classes are created and their subjects attach automatically from the stream template.

    ✓ classes now exist with subjects
  5. Academic year & terms

    Adopt a standard calendar or define your own. Set exactly one year as current — everything “this year” keys off it.

  6. Exams & grading

    Your grading scale, pass mark, and the assessments per term (continuous assessment and end-of-term).

  7. Graduation criteria

    Examination grades and promotion rules. Finish to mark setup complete.


The subject model

Core versus Options

Every subject on a class is one of two kinds. The distinction is what lets two sections of the same grade carry different subjects.

CORE

Taken by everyone in the class. The national/compulsory subjects — English, Mathematics, Civic Education — plus whatever your school requires of all pupils. Shared identically across every section of the phase.

OPTION

The section’s elective bundle. In your school’s per-class model, the whole section takes the same options — so Form 1 A’s sciences bundle can differ from Form 1 B’s commerce bundle.

What this looks like in practice

Two sections of the same grade, same core, different options:

Example — a real school’s Form 1, two sections
ClassCore (shared)Options (differ)
Form 1 A
CivicComputerEnglishMaths
Agric. ScienceBiologyAccounts
Form 1 B
CivicComputerEnglishMaths
CommerceDesign & TechPhysics

How inheritance works

Streams span grades — unless you scope them

By default a stream’s subjects apply to every grade in the section, so Form 1 A through Form 4 A match. When that isn’t what you want, you scope a subject to specific grades.

When to scope by grade

Two common cases where the section shouldn’t simply inherit everything:

Streaming at senior level

If pupils only choose a science or arts pathway from Form 4, scope that option bundle to FORM 4 so it doesn’t appear on Form 1 A of the same section.

Lower vs Upper Primary

Grades 1–3 and Grades 4–6 have different learning areas even in the same section. Scope each set to its grades so a Grade 1 class doesn’t inherit upper-primary subjects.

Edit a stream once, and every class follows Change the subjects on the Streams & Subjects page and all classes in that section re-derive. Subjects that already have marks recorded are never removed automatically — your data is safe.


Optional

Pathways: named option bundles

A pathway — Science, Business, Arts, Technical — is a saved bundle of subjects you can apply to a class in one move. Assigning a pathway writes its subjects into that class’s stream as options, then the class re-derives.

Use pathways when you run recognisable subject groupings and want to set a class up in one action rather than picking options individually. Compulsory subjects in the pathway land as CORE; the rest as OPTION, pinned to that class’s grade so they don’t leak across the whole section.


Before you rely on it

Four things that quietly go wrong

Mark your core subjects as Compulsory Only compulsory subjects seed onto new classes. If a school’s subjects aren’t marked compulsory, a newly created class starts with an empty subject list and you’ll add everything by hand.

One record per subject — avoid duplicates Some schools accumulate several “Mathematics” or “English” records. Each duplicate seeds separately, so a pupil ends up with the same subject listed two or three times — and it repeats on report cards. Keep a single record per subject.

Set the current academic year consistently Classes attach to a year. If you create classes and then name a different year as current, the classes stay on the old one and current-year views show “no classes.” Confirm the current year matches the year your classes were created in.

Don’t stream electives at the wrong grade Because sections inherit across grades, an option added without a grade scope appears on every grade in that section. If you only stream from Form 4, scope the bundle to the senior grades.