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; 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 the grade level, the section, the capacity and the medium of instruction; assign a class teacher; 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 weekly periods, swap a room — all without locking the system. The school year does not have to be perfect on day one.

Past sessions stay queryable, not archived away

Closing a session in Inkwelly does not push it into a separate system or an offline backup. Records stay where they are and remain searchable. A teacher who left 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 previous sessions still 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 and Humanities streams at Class 11 and 12 — all rendered in the structure card with stacked bars per NEP stage. A Pune school 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 capacity and a live enrolment count. Over-capacity classes are flagged in the structure card; under-utilised classes are flagged below the configured threshold (typically 40 percent). For trustees and the affiliation team, this is the single screen that answers 'how full is the school' without anyone running a database query.

Class-teacher assignment is a first-class workflow. Pick the employee, mark them as 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 shows up in the alerts feed before the academic year goes live.

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

Indian school subjects do not fit into a single column. Mathematics is academic and marks-based; Yoga is health-and-physical-education 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'. The assessment shape lives on the subject itself; the marks-entry and report-card screens read it directly. Theory marks plus a practical component (common in Computer Science and the Sciences) are handled through board-specific component configurations — no per-subject hacks.

Board codes for 23 Indian and international boards

Twenty-three boards ship pre-loaded out of the box — CBSE, ICSE, ISC, the International Baccalaureate, 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 and Punjab. A custom 'Other' slot covers any minority, NIOS or madrasa board not on this list — no rebuild needed on your end.

For each board, the subject's code, the board's official subject name (often different from the school's label), theory marks, practical marks, internal marks, pass marks and weightages are stored once. The marksheet template, the transcript export, the APAAR-linked transcript and the migration certificate 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. Vocational subjects carry a category (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 or Other), an NSQF level from 1 to 10, an NSDC code for the National Skill Development Corporation qualification pack, a required practical-hours count, an industry-partner-required flag and a certification body (NIELIT, the relevant Sector Skill Council, and so on).

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.

Credits and the Academic Bank of Credits (ABC)

NEP 2020 ties Indian education to the Academic Bank of Credits — every learning experience, from a regular subject to an online course to a community-service stint, can carry credits that follow the student across institutions. Inkwelly bakes this in. Every subject can carry credits, a credit type (academic, vocational, experiential, community service, co-curricular or online course) and credit hours.

When CBSE or your board enables APAAR-linked credit transfers — and it will — your records are already in shape. Marksheets can show credit summaries, transcripts can stream into the APAAR-linked ABC framework, and vocational and co-curricular contributions appear alongside academic ones, not buried in a separate annexure at the back.

Streams, electives, language groups — one model fits all

A Class 11 Science stream is a stream group with a mandatory-range selection (pick four, allow five) over Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics, Biology, Computer Science and Physical Education. A Class 9 third-language group is a language group with a mandatory-one selection from Hindi, Sanskrit, French or German. A Class 6 art elective is an elective group with free choice and a mutually-exclusive flag — the student picks one out of dance, drama, music or visual art.

Selection rules can chain. A prerequisite link lets you say: only students who took Biology in Class 9 are eligible for the Bio-tech stream in Class 11. Conditional rules handle 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. Each batch carries a code, a name, the subject it delivers, the grade level, a capacity, a current strength, a periods-per-week count and a preferred room. A Class 9 with three language batches running in parallel is three teaching batches; a Class 11 Science stream is one batch per subject; a co-scholastic art class with two batches (one for each section) is two batches.

Teacher assignment is separate — a batch can have a primary teacher plus one or more assistant teachers. Bulk-create is supported for schools setting up a fresh session — paste a list of class × subject pairs and the batches generate, ready for teacher assignment. Bulk-delete works the same way when the year ends.

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 Pre-Primary class in 2025-26, every Pre-Primary class in 2026-27 and every Pre-Primary class in 2027-28 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 day-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. Teacher double-booking — the same teacher scheduled for two simultaneous batches. Room double-booking — the same physical room booked for two simultaneous classes. Class overlap — the same class scheduled into two distinct entries at the same period (often a copy-paste error).

Every conflict shows exactly which two entries collide. The dashboard shows a single conflict count with breakdown — for example, three teacher double-bookings and one room double-booking — and the timetable view marks the offending cells in red. Conflicts must clear before a timetable's 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 to record the override on the date itself — pick the action (substitute, cancel, extra class or room change), the substitute teacher (if needed), an optional new room, and a reason.

Each override carries the user who created it, the timestamp, the reason and optional remarks. Recent overrides can be pulled up by action, by class or by teacher — so leadership can see whether one wing keeps running on substitutes.

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.

Every student gets their own timetable

In a single-section school, the class timetable is the student timetable. But the moment you have electives, streams or language groups, every Class 11 student's week looks different — one student has Physics-Chemistry-Maths-Biology, another has Physics-Chemistry-Maths-Computer Science, a third has Commerce with Maths instead of Economics.

Inkwelly generates a personal timetable per student that reflects their batch choices. The student app shows the right period at the right time, the right teacher, the right room. Parents see the same thing. When a substitute is recorded for one of those batches, only the affected students' timetables show the change — not every Class 11 student in the school.

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: sessions and grade levels first; then classes and sections; then subjects with their type and assessment mode; then board-code mapping (we ship pre-loaded codes for the major boards — pass them through); then subject offerings per class; then teaching batches; then teacher assignments; then timetable templates and instances. Two weeks for a 1,000-student school is the median.

From Educomp, Campus Care, MyClassCampus, Vidyalaya, Teachmint

These five cover roughly 70 percent 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-to-class 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 period-by-period structure.

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.