Set Up Your School in skillSYMS: Grades, Classes, Learners, Registers and Reports

Summary

Schools & ECD (EducationOS) runs a school or early learning centre on the same platform as your other programmes. Each learner is one person with one record across the years. This guide takes a new school from an empty workspace to its first term report: you choose the institution type, place the school under its provincial department, build grades, classes and subjects, turn on the rules the school follows, bring learners across from SA-SAMS, and then run the daily and end-of-year work.

Two things to know first:

• Nothing is sent to the DBE, a provincial education department (PED) or LURITS. The Data quality tab checks your register before a return, but it does not submit anything.
• The SA-SAMS database file (.mdb) is never opened, and nothing is written back to SA-SAMS. You export the learner list to Excel or CSV and upload that.

For an overview of what the module covers, see School management software.

Who This Guide Is For

• Principals, deputy principals and school administrators setting up the school
• Admissions and registry staff bringing the learner register across from SA-SAMS
• Heads of department and teachers who take registers and capture marks

Prerequisites

Before you begin, ensure you have:

• A skillSYMS workspace for the school, and a role that can manage the school structure and learners (owners, administrators and directors have everything; teachers can take registers and capture marks)
• The school’s EMIS number, and its province, district and circuit
• A learner list exported from SA-SAMS (or another school system) as .xlsx or .csv
• The platform team’s confirmation that the assessment, promotion and data-quality policies your school needs have been verified and published in Regulation Studio. A school cannot use a policy that is still a draft.

Tip: Set up grades, classes and subjects before you import or admit learners. When a learner is admitted or placed in a class, the grade’s compulsory subjects are allocated automatically. A subject added later is not added to learners who were already admitted.

Step 1: Choose Your Institution Type

1. In the sidebar, go to Learners → Schools & ECD (/sdp/education).
2. Under What kind of institution is this?, choose the Institution type. A primary, secondary, combined or independent school activates the Schools Pack. A nursery school or ECD centre activates the Early Learning (ECD) Pack.
3. Enter the EMIS number and click Activate pack.

The Overview tab then shows a numbered Setup checklist and a This workspace panel with counts of schools, grades, classes, subject offerings, learners and guardian links. Activating a pack changes the screens and starting rules you see. It does not change what your workspace has bought.

Step 2: Add the School Under Its Provincial Department

1. Open the Structure tab (/sdp/education/structure).
2. Under Organisation hierarchy, the national department and the nine provincial departments are already listed and marked reference. You cannot create a department; you attach to one.
3. Click + Add unit. To add a district or circuit first, choose it as the Type and pick its Parent.
4. Add the school: Type = School (or ECD centre), Name, Parent = your district, circuit or provincial department, EMIS number and, for a public school, the Quintile.
5. Click Add.

Step 3: Create CAPS Grades, Classes and Subjects

1. On Structure, choose the School and the Academic year.
2. Click Create CAPS grades…. Leave the box blank for Grade R to 12, or type the grades you offer separated by commas (for example R,1,2,3). Click Create.
3. On each grade, click + Class and enter the Class code (for example 8A), the Register teacher and the Capacity.
4. Click CAPS subjects to add the grade’s subjects for the year. Tick Include optional subjects and FET electives if you offer them.
5. To add a subject that is not in the list, click + Subject and complete Subject name, Code, Role in promotion rules (for example Home Language or Mathematics), Has a Practical Assessment Task, Allocated to every learner in the grade and Educator.

Each grade card shows its classes for the year, with the number of learners in each, and its subjects.

Step 4: Activate Your Policies

Weightings, promotion requirements and data checks are rules the school activates, not settings built into the software.

1. Open the Policies tab (/sdp/education/policies).
2. Under Available from Regulation Studio, find the assessment policy, the progression (promotion) policy and the data-quality rule set for your school.
3. Click Activate and confirm. The policy moves to In use at this school.

Only published policies have an Activate button. A policy marked Not yet published must first be verified and published in Regulation Studio by the platform team. A policy that was published without verification carries an unverified label everywhere it is used. Check its weightings against the current official documents before you rely on it.

Until the matching policy is active, results, progression runs and data-quality checks are refused. Once a decision has been made on a policy version, that version is locked to the decision.

Step 5: Admit or Import Learners

Admit one learner

1. Open the Learners tab (/sdp/education/learners), choose the School and Year.
2. Click + Admit learner and complete First name, Surname, Date of birth, Gender, SA ID number (optional), Grade, Class code (optional), Admission type and Previous school.
3. Click Admit.

SA ID numbers are stored masked. Only the last four digits are ever shown.

Import from SA-SAMS

1. In SA-SAMS, export the learner list to Excel (.xlsx) or CSV.
2. Open the SA-SAMS import tab (/sdp/education/import). Choose the School, Academic year and File, then click Check columns.
3. Under 2. Check the columns, check what each column Imports as. Columns are matched by name and have not been checked against every SA-SAMS version, so check each one. Surname, first names and grade are required. Set any column you do not want to ignore.
4. Look at First rows as they will be read. ID numbers are masked.
5. Leave Create grades and classes that do not exist yet ticked if you want missing grades and classes created, then click 3. Stage and check for duplicates.
6. In the staged import, review every row. The Match column shows how closely the row matches someone already in the workspace (exact, probable, possible or conflict) and why. For each flagged row, choose a Decision: same person (link), new person or skip. Only an exact match (ID, date of birth and surname) is linked for you. Possible duplicates and conflicts are never merged automatically.
7. When every row is decided, click 4. Approve, then 5. Import and confirm. Large files import in chunks; leave the page open until you see Import complete.
8. Read the Reconciliation line. It shows, per grade, how many rows were in the file, how many were imported and how many learners are enrolled now. If it says the rows and enrolments do not match, investigate before you carry on.

A file can hold up to 5,000 rows and 8 MB. If yours is bigger, split it by grade.

Step 6: Link Parents and Guardians

1. On Learners, click a learner to open the record.
2. Under Guardians, click + Link guardian.
3. Complete First name, Surname, Mobile, Email, Relationship and Legal authority. Tick Lives with the learner and May give consent where they apply.
4. If there is a collection or contact restriction, enter it in the restricted field. It never appears in a list. Staff with permission to view it must give a purpose, and each view is recorded with their name.
5. Click Link.

The record also has + Add identifier (for example a LURITS number), Place / move class, Transfer out and Withdraw. A learner who returns is readmitted as a new enrolment. A closed one is never reopened.

Step 7: Take the Register

1. Open the Attendance tab (/sdp/education/attendance). Choose the School, Year, Class and Date.
2. Click Mark all unmarked present, then correct the exceptions: late, absent, excused absence or early departure.
3. Click Save.
4. When every learner is marked, click Submit register and confirm. After that, marks can only change if an administrator reopens the register.

If someone else changed a learner’s mark after you opened the register, that row shows Changed by someone else. Your mark is not saved, and the rest of the register still saves.

Step 8: Capture Marks and Compute Results

1. Open the Assessment tab (/sdp/education/assessment). Choose the School, Year, Subject and Term. The active assessment policy and its weightings are shown above the tasks.
2. Click + Task and complete Title, Counts towards, Type, Out of, Weight inside the component and Date. Click Create.
3. Select the task. Enter each learner’s Mark, or set the Status to absent, excused, exempt or not submitted.
4. Click Save marks.
5. When the term’s tasks are captured, click Compute term results. At year end, click Compute final results.

A missing mark is never counted as zero without being flagged. A final result that is missing a component is shown as undetermined, not as a number.

Step 9: Run Progression at Year End

1. Open the Progression tab (/sdp/education/progression). Choose the School, Year and Grade, then click Propose decisions.
2. Open the run. Each learner shows the proposed decision and every promotion requirement as met, unmet or unknown, with the detail.
3. Where the school decides differently, click Override…, choose the Decision and give a reason of at least 10 characters. The proposed decision stays on the record beside yours.
4. Click Approve, then Apply to enrolments. This writes each outcome to the year’s enrolment and completes it.
5. Click Roll over to next year and confirm the Next academic year. Learners who were promoted or progressed get a pending enrolment in the next grade. Retained learners stay in the same grade.
6. In the new year, place each rolled-over learner in a class. Placing a learner in a class activates the enrolment.

A learner is never retained because a mark was not captured. If a requirement cannot be established, the decision is undetermined, and the run cannot be approved until you capture the missing results and propose again, or override that decision with a reason. Proposing and approving are separate permissions. If the same person does both, it is recorded, not blocked.

Step 10: Print and Release Reports

1. Open the Reports tab (/sdp/education/reports). Choose the School, Year, Class, the Report (Term 1 to 4, or Final) and the attendance dates.
2. Click Show reports. Each report shows subjects, percentages, achievement levels, attendance and, for the final report, the approved year-end decision.
3. Click Print to print, or save as PDF from your browser.
4. When the reports are ready for parents, click Release to guardians and confirm. This cannot be undone. Only guardians with a portal link can see released reports. See Learner Support, Behaviour, Governance and the Guardian Portal.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

1. “Pack … is not in the catalogue”: the platform team has not yet loaded the EducationOS catalogue. Contact skillSYMS support.
2. ”… is draft in Regulation Studio. A Super Admin must verify and publish it”: you cannot activate a draft policy. Ask the platform team to verify and publish it.
3. “No active assessment policy covers grade …”: tasks can be planned, but results are not computed until an assessment policy for that grade is active under Policies. The same applies to progression (“No active progression policy covers grade …”) and to Data quality.
4. Adding subjects after admitting learners: compulsory subjects are allocated when a learner is admitted or placed in a class. Build subjects first. If a task shows “No learners take this subject”, open each learner and use Place / move class to place them in their class again, which allocates the grade’s compulsory subjects.
5. Uploading the SA-SAMS .mdb file: it is refused. Export the learner list to Excel or CSV instead.
6. Trying to approve with rows undecided: “row(s) still need a decision” means flagged rows remain. Decide each one as link, new person or skip.
7. “Grade … does not exist at this school” on import: either leave Create grades and classes that do not exist yet ticked when you stage, or create the grade under Structure first.
8. “Every learner needs a mark before the register is submitted”: mark every learner, save, then submit.
9. “This register was submitted. Ask an administrator to reopen it”: a submitted register is closed to changes until it is reopened.
10. “learner(s) have no determinable decision”: capture the missing results and propose again, or override each undetermined decision with a reason.
11. “A proposed or approved run already exists for this grade and year”: finish the open run before proposing a new one.
12. Expecting skillSYMS to submit to the department: nothing is sent to the DBE, a PED or LURITS.

Verification Checklist

Before relying on the school set-up, verify:

• The Overview shows the pack as active and the school’s EMIS number
• The school appears under its provincial department in Organisation hierarchy
• Every grade has its classes and subjects for the year
• Policies shows an active assessment, progression and data-quality policy, and you have noted any marked unverified
• The import’s Reconciliation line says every imported row is an enrolled learner
• Learners without a class or without guardians (shown in amber on Learners) have been followed up
• A test register was saved and submitted, and a test task’s marks computed into a term result

Next Steps

• Learner Support, Behaviour, Governance and the Guardian Portal — Teaching assignments, support cases, the SGB and parent links
• Offline Working — skillSYMS Desktop, offline packs and the Sync Centre
• School management software — What Schools & ECD covers