Your academic backbone. Sessions, classes, subjects, timetable — all linked.

Two boards under one roof? Handled.

Many Indian schools run two boards in parallel — CBSE for the main wing and IGCSE for the senior wing, or CBSE plus the State Board for an aided pre-primary section. Inkwelly handles this without forcing two systems. Each class can be tagged to its own board via the subject library; subject offerings, board codes, examination patterns and timetables are kept separate per board, while the student list, fee ledger and staff directory remain shared.

A sibling group split between CBSE Class 8 and IGCSE Class 9 still appears as one family for parent communication, fee discounts and address-change updates. The accountant does not maintain two student rosters; the principal does not log in to two systems. One school, two boards, one operational view.

Mid-session changes without a restart

It is the third week of August. Class 9 admissions overflowed Section C and the school needs a Class 9-D — twelve days from now. In most ERPs this means a 'data correction request' to the vendor, two weeks of follow-up calls, and a Friday-night data import that breaks the parent app for three classes.

In Inkwelly, adding a section is a two-minute screen. Set gradeLevelId, sectionId and maxStudentsCapacity, assign a class teacher with isPrimary=true, and the new class appears in the timetable, attendance roster, fee ledger and parent app on the next page load. Add an optional language for Class 6 mid-year, change a teaching batch's periodsPerWeek from 5 to 6, swap a room — all without locking the system. The school year does not have to be perfect on day one.

Closed sessions are sealed forever, not deleted

Closing a session in Inkwelly does not archive it into a different system. The records remain in the same database, with the same identifiers, but flipped to read-only. A teacher who leaves in June 2024 still has her exact teaching assignments visible in 2025-26's records — useful when a previous student returns three years later for a Bonafide Certificate, or a CBSE inspector asks for the 2022-23 timetable to verify language teaching hours.

This is what makes Academics survive a CBSE renewal cycle. Affiliation paperwork frequently asks for three-year movement of subject offerings, teacher load and student strength. With sessions sealed and queryable, the answer is a one-click export, not a four-day reconciliation between an old Excel and the current ERP.

Pre-Primary to Class XII with NEP-aligned stages

The class structure supports Pre-Primary (Nursery, LKG, UKG), Class 1 to 12, and the Science / Commerce / Humanities streams at Class 11 and 12 — all rendered in the structure card with stacked bars per NEP stage. A school in Pune running CBSE Pre-Primary to XII sees a four-segment stack (FOUNDATIONAL · PREPARATORY · MIDDLE · SECONDARY); a Tier-3 school in Bahraich running only Class 1 to 8 sees three; an aided Madrasa upper-primary sees two.

Grade levels can be added or modified per board: a Cambridge IGCSE school maps Cambridge Lower Secondary to MIDDLE and IGCSE to SECONDARY; an IB school maps PYP, MYP and DP to the same NEP frame for UDISE compliance. Inkwelly stores both the school's labels and the NEP-mapped category — the latter is what UDISE+, RTE reports and trustee dashboards use.

Capacity, medium of instruction, and class teachers

Every class carries a maxStudentsCapacity and a derived enrolledStudentCount. Over-capacity classes are flagged in the structure card; under-utilised classes are flagged below the configured threshold (typically 40%). For trustees and the affiliation team, this is the single screen that answers 'how full is the school' without anyone running a SQL query.

Class-teacher assignment is a first-class workflow. assignClassTeacher(employeeId, isPrimary=true) makes the employee the primary; secondary class teachers (often a co-teacher or a wing in-charge) can be added too. Class-teacher coverage as a percentage shows up on the teachers card — and any class without a primary teacher fires CLASS_NO_TEACHER in the alerts feed before the academic year goes live.

Six subject types, seven assessment modes — every Indian board fits

Indian school subjects do not fit into a single column. Mathematics is SCHOLASTIC and MARKS_BASED; Yoga is HEALTH_PE and RUBRIC_BASED; Art is ART_EDUCATION and PORTFOLIO; SUPW is WORK_EDUCATION and DESCRIPTIVE; an NEP-aligned Bagless Day project is CO_SCHOLASTIC and COMPETENCY_BASED. CBSE's CCE-era schools, ICSE schools running rubrics for art, IB schools using portfolios, and State Boards mixing marks and grades — all map cleanly onto these dimensions without forcing one assessment style on every subject.

This is why Inkwelly does not need a separate 'CCE module' or 'rubrics module'. Assessment shape lives on the subject row itself; the marks-entry and report-card screens read it directly. Mixed-mode subjects (theory marks plus practical rubric, common in Computer Science) are first-class — assessmentMode = MIXED covers that without per-subject hacks.

Board codes for 24 Indian and international boards

The EducationBoard enum carries 24 named boards out of the box — CBSE, ICSE, ISC, IB, Cambridge IGCSE, plus every major State Board: Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Gujarat, Rajasthan, UP Board, West Bengal, Bihar, MP Board, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Odisha, Assam, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Punjab. New boards can be added under the OTHER slot without a schema change.

For each board, a subject's boardCode, boardSubjectName (the board's official name, often different from the school's label), theoryMaxMarks, practicalMaxMarks, internalMaxMarks, pass marks and weightages are stored once. The marksheet template, the transcript export, the APAAR-linked transcript, the migration certificate — they all read from this single source. No more 'check the printed circular' to find the correct CBSE code 086 vs 087 the night before result publication.

Vocational subjects with NSQF level and NSDC code

NEP 2020 pushed vocational education from a side stream to a core requirement. Inkwelly bakes it in. Subjects flagged isVocational = true carry a vocationalCategory (IT-ITeS, Healthcare, Agriculture, Retail, Tourism, Beauty & Wellness, Banking & Finance, Construction, Automotive, Electronics, Apparel, Media, Food Processing, Logistics, Manufacturing, Sports & Fitness, Telecom, Security, Plumbing, Electrical, Other), an nsqfLevel from 1 to 10, an nsdcCode for the National Skill Development Corporation qualification pack, requiredPracticalHours, an industryPartnerRequired flag and certificationBody (NIELIT, Sector Skill Council, etc.).

When CBSE asks 'how many students completed Level 2 NSQF in IT-ITeS this session', the answer is a one-screen filter, not a phone call to the vocational coordinator. When DGT or NSDC wants the practicum-hour return, it is a one-click export. Schools running CBSE Skill Subjects, ITI integration or NEP vocational pilots get this without a separate vocational ERP.

Streams, electives, language groups — one model fits all

A Class 11 Science stream is a STREAM group with MANDATORY_RANGE selection (minRequired = 4, maxAllowed = 5) and a list of subjects (Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics, Biology, Computer Science, Physical Education). The student picks four; the fifth is optional. A Class 9 third-language group is a LANGUAGE_GROUP with MANDATORY_ONE selection from Hindi, Sanskrit, French, or German. A Class 6 art-elective is an ELECTIVE_GROUP with FREE_CHOICE and isMutuallyExclusive = true — the student picks one out of dance, drama, music, visual art.

Selection rules can chain. A prerequisiteGroupId lets you say: only students who chose Biology in Class 9 are eligible for the Bio-tech stream in Class 11. A conditionalRules JSON field handles board-specific quirks — like CBSE's rule that students opting out of Mathematics at Class 9 must take a vocational subject. The system enforces the rule at enrolment, not after marks are entered.

Teaching batches — the real unit of delivery

A subject group is the rule; a teaching batch is the room. TeachingBatch carries batchCode, batchName, subjectOfferingId (the FK to which subject is being delivered), gradeLevelId, maxCapacity, currentStrength, periodsPerWeek and a preferredRoomId hint. A Class 9 with three language batches running in parallel is three TeachingBatch rows; a Class 11 Science stream is one TeachingBatch per subject; a co-scholastic art class with two batches (one for each section) is two batches.

Teaching assignment is a separate row — TeachingAssignment with teachingBatchId, employeeId and isPrimary. A batch can have a primary teacher and one or more assistant or substitute teachers. Bulk creation is supported via bulkCreateTeachingBatches(payload) for schools setting up a fresh session — paste a CSV of class × subject pairs and the batches are generated, ready for teacher assignment.

Reusable templates per NEP stage

Most ERPs ask schools to rebuild the timetable per class every April. Inkwelly inverts this — templates live longer than sessions. A 'Foundational Stage Template' (with shorter periods and a longer activity slot) is reused for every 2025-26 Pre-Primary class, every 2026-27 class, and every 2027-28 class until the school decides to revise the day structure.

Per-day-of-week period structure is fully supported. Saturday running on a half-day with five periods instead of eight is a different dayOfWeek row inside the same template, not a separate template. A Madrasa school running additional Friday classes for moral instruction adds a Friday-only slot type. The day-structure decision is made once per stage, not per class per session. New sessions inherit; new classes adopt.

Three kinds of conflicts, all flagged before publish

The timetable engine detects three classes of conflicts. teacherDoubleBooked — the same teacher scheduled for two simultaneous batches. roomDoubleBooked — the same physical room scheduled for two simultaneous classes. classOverlap — the same class scheduled into two distinct entries at the same period (often a copy-paste error).

Each conflict carries the conflictingEntryIds so the school sees exactly which two entries collide. The dashboard shows a single conflict count with breakdown — teacherDoubleBooked: 3, roomDoubleBooked: 1 — and the timetable view marks the offending cells in red. Conflicts must clear before a timetable status can move from DRAFT to PUBLISHED. No more discovering on day three of the new session that the Maths teacher has been booked for two Class 8 sections at 11:30 every Tuesday since August.

Substitution overrides — four actions, full audit

A teacher applies for two days' leave on Friday. In most ERPs, the school's response is to scribble a substitute schedule on the back of the timetable printout and forget it. In Inkwelly, the response is createOverride(action: SUBSTITUTE, substituteEmployeeId, overrideDate, reason).

The TimetableOverride model supports four actions: SUBSTITUTE (swap one teacher for another), CANCEL (mark the period off), EXTRA_CLASS (add an unscheduled period), ROOM_CHANGE (move to a different room). Each override carries a reason, optional remarks, and an audit trail of the user who created it. The dashboard shows overrideRate.last7DaysCount and last30DaysCount per school plus a breakdown by action.

Why this matters: when a parent calls in November asking why their child's Hindi class did not happen on October 15, the answer is a one-row record — substitute teacher's name, the reason, and the time the override was logged.

From Excel and printed registers

The most common starting point. The school has a class master in Excel, a subject list in another sheet, a teacher roster in a third, and a printed timetable taped to the staff-room wall. Inkwelly's onboarding team starts with the Excel files — they are easier to map than the printed register, but the register catches subjects and electives that the spreadsheet missed.

A typical migration order: 1) Sessions and grade levels, 2) Classes and sections, 3) Subjects with type and assessment mode, 4) Board code mapping (we ship pre-loaded codes for major boards — pass them through), 5) Subject offerings per class, 6) Teaching batches, 7) Teaching assignments, 8) Timetable templates, 9) Timetable instances. Two weeks for a 1,000-student school is the median.

From Educomp, Campus Care, MyClassCampus, Vidyalaya, Teachmint

These five cover roughly 70% of the schools that approach us with an existing ERP. We have done the migration mapping for each. From Campus Care, the typical export drops class, section, subject and teacher data in a clean CSV that maps almost cleanly. From Educomp, the export is split across modules but the subject-offering relationship survives. From MyClassCampus and Teachmint, the timetable export tends to be the friction point — those tools store schedules in a slot-by-slot format that needs translation to our TimetableEntry rows.

In every migration, the team reconstructs the subject group rules (electives, languages, streams) by looking at which students are enrolled in which subjects. This is the part that requires school input — but it is one structured conversation, not a six-month consulting engagement.