Subject Choices & Electives
From the subjects a school offers to the two a child actually takes — the elective rules, the window families choose in, the approval that makes a choice real, and the timetable it changes.
A choice made at home, on rules set at school, that nobody has to re-type
Elective choices are usually run on paper: a slip goes home in a schoolbag, comes back with two subjects ticked, and a registrar types four hundred of them into a spreadsheet in the week before term. Everything downstream — the exam roster, the gradebook, the report card, the timetable — quietly inherits whatever that typing got right. This walkthrough follows one choice the whole way instead: the school says which subjects are elective and how many of each block a year group may take, opens a window for that year group, and the pupil and their guardian choose inside those rules from their own portals. Nothing counts until the school approves it, and the moment it does, it is the same record everywhere. Every screen below is the real application, live with sample school data.
On this page
Say what the school teaches
A choice is only as good as the list it is made from. The catalogue is that list — every subject the school offers, whose department it belongs to, and which year groups take it — and it is the one place the rest of this flow reads from.
The subject catalogue
Ten subjects for the junior school: the six every pupil takes and the four they choose between. The year-group badges on each row are what makes a subject real — a subject offered nowhere is visible as exactly that, rather than sitting in a list looking taught.
Compulsory is a per-year-group answer
Opening a subject shows the decision this whole flow turns on. “Elective” is not a property of French — it is a property of French in JSS 2. The same subject can be compulsory in one year group and a choice in the next, which is exactly how a curriculum that widens as pupils get older is actually shaped.
Ready to run your school on this?
Every screen in “Say what the school teaches” is the live product, not a mockup. Create your school account, or have us walk you through it on a call.
Turn a list of options into a rule
“Choose two of these four” is a rule, not a note in a letter. Written down as a rule, the picker can enforce it, the matrix can flag the rows that break it, and nobody has to audit four hundred slips to find the child who picked two languages and no vocational subject.
The blocks a year group chooses from
This school runs two blocks in every junior year: one subject from Humanities & Languages, one from Business & Vocational. Rules belong to a year group, so JSS 1’s blocks can differ from JSS 3’s, and last session’s wider block is kept rather than deleted — the rules a school used are part of its record.
A block is a minimum, a maximum and a set
The builder is deliberately small, because the rule is small: name it, say how many of the set a pupil must take and how many they may, then tick the subjects it covers. Subjects already claimed by another block in the same year group are listed as taken rather than hidden, which is what stops one choice being counted twice. Everything downstream — the family picker, the staff matrix, the exam roster — enforces this one object.
See this on your own school’s data.
Every screen in “Turn a list of options into a rule” is the live product, not a mockup. Create your school account, or have us walk you through it on a call.
Open the window
A selection window is the school’s consent to be asked. Without one the family picker is closed and says so; with one, a year group has a defined fortnight in which its choices are collected — which is what stops a trickle of requests arriving all session.
A year group, a fortnight, and who may submit
The form says the quiet part out loud: saving does not open it. A window accepts submissions only once it has been opened AND today falls inside its dates, so a window drafted in June for August cannot collect anything early by accident.
Set this up for your team.
Every screen in “Open the window” is the live product, not a mockup. Create your school account, or have us walk you through it on a call.
The pupil chooses
This is the screen the whole flow exists for, and it is on the pupil’s own portal — no login shared with a parent, no form to print. The rules set two steps ago are enforced here, before the button, not after it.
Choose inside the rules
Chidi opens his subject choices and sees the six subjects he takes regardless, then each block with its own rule stated on it. He picks French and Pre-Vocational Studies. The submit button stays disabled until both blocks are satisfied and says which one is not — a submission is a final answer, so the rule is worth enforcing before it is sent rather than rejecting it afterwards.
Ready to run your school on this?
Every screen in “The pupil chooses” is the live product, not a mockup. Create your school account, or have us walk you through it on a call.
The same choice, seen at home
A guardian opening their ward’s subject choices does not get a copy or a notification about a decision already made — they get the same live record, from their own portal, with the same rules on it.
One record, two portals
Chidi’s guardian sees the submission he made an hour ago, marked as awaiting the school’s approval, and the same two blocks he chose within. Where the window allows it they can submit on his behalf — a family without a pupil device is not a family that has to use paper — and where it does not, this is where they see what was sent.
See this on your own school’s data.
Every screen in “The same choice, seen at home” is the live product, not a mockup. Create your school account, or have us walk you through it on a call.
Decide, and mean it
Submissions land in a queue on the same page the window was opened from, because the number waiting on a decision is the only thing that makes having opened a window worth knowing about. Until someone decides, nothing about a pupil’s timetable, exams or report card has moved.
The review queue
The windows sit above — one open, one drafted for the next year group, one closed and done — and beneath them, everything families have sent in. Each row carries the pupil, their class, the subjects chosen and whether it came from the pupil or a guardian. Approving writes the subjects immediately; rejecting sends it back with a reason, which is the humane half of the same action.
Set this up for your team.
Every screen in “Decide, and mean it” is the live product, not a mockup. Create your school account, or have us walk you through it on a call.
The record the school actually keeps
Approval writes into one place: the class’s selection matrix. It is also the screen a school uses when a family never chose at all — because a system that only works when every parent replies is a system that does not work.
Who offers what, class by class
A tick grid of the class against its elective subjects, with the compulsory core listed above it and each block’s rule stated beside it. Approved submissions are already ticked here; the open rows are the pupils nobody has heard from — and the one whose submission is still sitting in the queue, because approving is what writes it. A line above the grid names how many pupils are still incomplete and says plainly that exam rosters built from this class would miss them.
When the choice came back on paper
Schools that collected slips this year, or that are moving onto the platform mid-session, do not have to click four hundred rows. One line per pupil — registration number, then subject codes — pasted or uploaded, validated against the same rules, and reported back row by row before anything is written.
Next session, without asking again
Most pupils continue with what they chose. Carry-forward copies each pupil’s electives into the new year wherever the new year group still offers them, previews exactly what would happen, and never overwrites a pupil who has already chosen for the target year.
Ready to run your school on this?
Every screen in “The record the school actually keeps” is the live product, not a mockup. Create your school account, or have us walk you through it on a call.
What the choice actually changed
The point of writing the choice into the record rather than a spreadsheet is that everything else already reads that record. Nobody re-enters it, and nothing downstream can disagree with it.
Eight subjects, two of them chosen
Chidi’s subjects are now the six every pupil takes plus French and Pre-Vocational Studies, with the teacher and the periods each is taught. The same approved set is what his gradebook columns, his exam roster and his report card are built from — which is why the approval step earlier is worth having.
See this on your own school’s data.
Every screen in “What the choice actually changed” is the live product, not a mockup. Create your school account, or have us walk you through it on a call.
Run your whole school on one connected platform
Start with the base package, switch on the modules you need, and give every parent, student and staff member a single place to log in.