How to Set Up a Secondary School on Femlify in 15 Minutes

One of the most persistent myths about school management software is that it takes weeks to implement. IT consultants. Training sessions. Data migration projects. A full term of parallel running before the old system is retired. For a school proprietor or administrator, this narrative is exhausting before the first click.

It does not have to be this way. Femlify is built for schools that need to be operational quickly — not for enterprise IT teams with multi-month deployment timelines. A secondary school with a standard JSS1–SSS3 structure can go from a blank account to a fully configured school — with classes, grading, staff, and fee structures in place — in under fifteen minutes. Not because corners are cut, but because the setup flow is designed around how secondary schools actually work, with templates that load your structure in seconds.

This guide walks you through every step. By the time you finish, your school will be ready to enroll students, take attendance, enter scores, and collect fees. Keep your school details handy and let's start the clock.

What You'll Need Before You Start

Before opening Femlify, gather the following so you are not pausing mid-setup to find information:

• Your school's full name and website address (if you have one)
• Head of school name and school contact email and phone number
• Your school's physical address
• Your brand colors — the primary and secondary colors from your school's logo (hex codes if you have them, or you can use the visual picker)
• Your class structure — for a standard Nigerian secondary school this is JSS1, JSS2, JSS3, SS1, SS2, SS3. Note whether any classes have multiple arms (A, B, C) and whether SS classes have streams (Science, Arts, Business)
• Staff email addresses — at least for the key staff you want to add in this session
• Your fee amounts — the term fees for each class level, including any levies (PTA, development, practical fees)

That is everything. You do not need to configure a server, or involve an IT professional. Let's go.

Step 1 — Create Your School Profile (2 minutes)

The first thing Femlify asks when you create a new school is to choose a school type. Select K12, Junior / High School — this is the option designed for Nigerian primary and secondary schools. Academy and Tertiary options are available for other institution types but are not the focus of this guide.

Once you've selected K12, you'll fill in your school's basic information:

• School Name — Enter your full school name as it should appear on reports and documents
• Website — Optional, but useful if you plan to use Femlify's website builder
• Head of School — The name that will appear on report cards and official documents
• School Address — Your physical location
• Contact Email and Phone — Used for correspondence and displayed on generated documents

Upload your school logo. Click the logo upload area, select your logo file (JPEG or PNG, max 512KB), and crop if needed. This logo will appear on dashboards, report cards, invoices, and the login page.

Set your brand colors. In the Branding section, click the Primary Color picker and enter your hex code or choose from the palette. Do the same for Secondary Color. These colors generate automatic 10-shade scales that will be used throughout the platform and any website pages you build.

Your school profile is the foundation everything else sits on — getting the name, logo, and colors right at this step means they appear correctly on every document the school ever generates.

Step 2 — Build Your Academic Structure (4 minutes)

This is where Femlify's template system saves the most time. Go to School Setup → Academic Structure.

Load the stage and class level template. Click Use Template on the Stages screen. For a standard Nigerian secondary school, select the template that includes Junior Secondary (JSS1, JSS2, JSS3) and Senior Secondary (SS1, SS2, SS3). This creates all six class levels — with their short codes (JSS1, JSS2, JSS3, SSS1, SSS2, SSS3) — in one click. If your school also has a primary section, include Primary Lower and Primary Upper stages in the same template.

Add arms to your classes. Navigate to the Arms tab. For each class level that has multiple sections, click Add Arm and enter the arm name — A, B, C, or whatever your school uses. If most of your classes share the same arm structure, create an Arm Preset (e.g. "2-arm: A and B") so you can apply it to multiple classes quickly.

Configure streams for senior secondary. Navigate to the Streams tab. For SSS1, SSS2, and SSS3, click Add Stream and create your school's streams — Science, Arts, Business, or Humanities, depending on what your school offers. Streams determine which students receive stream-specific fee charges and subject offerings.

Set up your academic session and terms. Go to Academic Sessions and click New Session. Name it (e.g. "2025/2026 Session"), set the start and end dates, and designate Third Term as the Last Term for cumulative report computation. Then go to Academic Terms and add your three terms with their respective date ranges. Mark the current term as Current.

Using the template for stages and class levels takes fifteen seconds and gives you a fully structured Nigerian secondary school hierarchy — building it manually from scratch would take twenty minutes alone.

Step 3 — Configure Your Grading System and Mark Distribution (3 minutes)

Go to School Setup → Grading Systems and click Use Template.

For a Nigerian secondary school, the most common choices are:

• WAEC Standard — The 9-point scale (A to F9) used for senior secondary classes
• Standard Secondary System — A 6-tier A to F scale commonly used for junior secondary
• Standard K12 System — A detailed 12-point scale with sub-grades, suitable for schools that want granular performance differentiation

Load the template appropriate for your school. If your JSS and SSS classes use different grading systems, create two — one for each. You can assign different grading systems to different class levels in the next step.

Set up your mark distribution. Go to Mark Distributions and click Use Template. For most Nigerian secondary schools, Standard K12 Assessment is the correct choice — CA1 (20 marks, 20%) + CA2 (20 marks, 20%) + Exam (60 marks, 60%) = 100. If your school uses a 30/70 split, select Standard College Assessment instead.

Assign the assessment policy. Once your term is configured, go into the term's settings and click Configure Assessment Policy for each class level. Select the mark distribution and grading system appropriate to that level. This is the configuration that makes score entry and automatic grade computation work correctly from day one.

Five minutes on grading configuration prevents a term's worth of recalculations — every score entered from this point will be graded and remarked automatically.

Step 4 — Set Up Subjects (2 minutes)

Go to School Setup → Subjects → School Subjects and click Use Template.

Femlify's Nigerian curriculum template loads over 20 standard subjects: English Studies, Mathematics, Basic Science, Physical & Health Education, Nigerian History, Social and Citizenship Studies, Cultural & Creative Arts, Christian Religious Studies, Islamic Studies, Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa, Arabic, and more. Select all that apply to your school and load them.

Then go to Class Subjects and assign the loaded subjects to each class level. For JSS classes, assign the general subjects. For SSS classes, assign both the core subjects and the stream-specific subjects relevant to each arm (e.g. Physics and Chemistry for Science stream, Economics and Commerce for Business stream).

Finally, go to Subject Teacher Assignments and use Bulk Assign to link your teachers to their subjects per class level. You will need your staff added first — which is the next step.

Step 5 — Add Staff and Assign Roles (2 minutes)

Go to Users → Staff and click New to add your first staff member.

Fill in their email address (required — this becomes their login), full name, gender, phone number, and account type (Teaching or Non-Teaching). Under Role (Optional), assign their role immediately: Class Teacher, Subject Teacher, Accountant, Registrar, Principal, or School Administrator. If you have many staff to add, use Bulk Import — download the official CSV template, fill it in, and upload it.

Femlify's six default roles are pre-configured with the right permissions for each function:

• School Administrator — Near-full access, for the registrar or head admin
• Principal — Broad academic oversight, report approval, attendance visibility
• Accountant — Finance module only, for your bursar
• Class Teacher — Attendance, skills rating, class roster
• Subject Teacher — Score entry for assigned subjects only
• Registrar — Admissions and student records

Roles take effect immediately. Staff members can log in as soon as their account is created.

Assigning the right role at the point of staff creation means every teacher and administrator sees exactly what they need from their very first login — no access confusion, no manual permission adjustments later.

Step 6 — Set Up Fee Structures (2 minutes)

Go to Fee Management → Fees and click New Fee.

Create a fee for each charge your school collects this term. For a standard secondary school setup:

• School Fees for JSS1 — Scope: Class Level → JSS1, Category: Tuition, Mandatory for All. Add line items: Tuition (e.g. ₦25,000), Development Levy (₦2,000), PTA Levy (₦1,000). Total computes automatically.
• School Fees for JSS2 — same structure, scoped to JSS2
• Practical Fees for SSS3 — Scope: Stream → Science, Category: Other, Mandatory for All

The scoping system means you create one fee per class level or stream — not one per student. When students are enrolled for the term, Femlify automatically generates the correct invoices based on which fees apply to their class and stream.

Set each fee status to Published when it is ready. Unpublished fees will not generate invoices.

You're Done — What to Do Next

If you followed each step, your school is now configured with a complete academic structure, grading system, subject assignments, staff accounts, and fee schedules — in well under fifteen minutes. The next steps are:

1. Open an admission campaign (if you are taking new students) or go directly to enrollment for returning students
2. Enroll students for the current term so they appear in attendance registers and score entry sheets
3. Invite teachers to log in and verify their access before the first day of class
4. Configure the attendance sessions (Morning, Afternoon) so teachers can begin taking daily attendance

The measure of a well-designed school management system is not how many features it has — it is how quickly a school can go from zero to operational without calling for help.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need technical knowledge to set up Femlify?

No. Femlify is designed for school administrators, not IT professionals. Every configuration step — academic structure, grading systems, staff accounts, and fee schedules — is done through simple forms and dropdown menus. The Use Template buttons throughout setup mean you rarely start from a blank screen. If you can navigate a school admin office, you can configure Femlify.

Can I change my grading system or mark distribution after setup?

Yes. Grading systems and mark distributions can be edited or replaced at any time in School Setup. If you change the configuration mid-term, you will need to recompute scores for affected class levels by clicking Compute by Grade — Femlify will recalculate all existing scores using the updated settings. It is best practice to finalise grading configuration before the first scores are entered.

What if my school has a different class structure from JSS1–SSS3?

Femlify is fully flexible. You are not limited to the standard Nigerian secondary structure. You can create any stages, class levels, and short codes that match your school. If you run a combined primary and secondary school, load a template that includes primary stages. If you have a non-standard class naming convention, create class levels with custom names and codes. The template is a starting point — everything can be adjusted.