JoomSchool - Promotion & Student Progression

At the end of every academic year, students move up to the next class. JoomSchool's Promotion view is the bulk tool that does this in one step instead of editing every student record by hand. This article walks through the year-end workflow: preparing the new academic year, choosing which students to promote, picking their destinations and verifying the result.

Overview

Student progression in JoomSchool is a year-end task. The Promotion admin view at Components → JoomSchool → Promotion (also accessible from the Academic hub) lets you:

1. Filter the student list down to a specific year, class and division.
2. Select students from that filter.
3. Choose the destination class, section, division and academic year.
4. Apply the change in one batch.

Behind the scenes, JoomSchool updates each selected student's class, section, division and year stamp. Their roll number, parent links, transport assignment and library membership stay attached to the same student record — only the academic position changes.

Prerequisites

Before opening the Promotion view, the following must already exist:

• The new academic year (the one you're promoting students into) is created and published. See the Manage Academic article for adding a new year.
• The destination classes, sections and divisions are created. If you're promoting from Class 6 to Class 7, Class 7 must exist.
• A complete and clean student list for the current year. Trash records for students who have left; archive records for students who finished their education at this school.

When to run promotion

Run promotion at one specific moment: after the current academic year's results are finalised and before the new academic year begins. A common timeline:

1. Final exams done, marks entered, results published.
2. End-of-year reports run, fees reconciled.
3. Student leavers identified and either trashed or archived.
4. New academic year created.
5. New classes / sections created if changing.
6. Promotion run.
7. New students for the new year are added (transfers, freshmen).

Running promotion mid-year breaks attendance and marks records that reference the old class / section.

Step-by-step: running promotion

1. Open Components → JoomSchool → Promotion (or click the Promotion tile on the Academic hub).
2. The page shows three filter dropdowns at the top:

1. After picking all three, the page below the filter populates with a list of students belonging to that combination.
2. Tick the students you want to promote — typically all of them, occasionally a subset.
3. Choose the destination — fields are revealed as you make selections:

1. Optionally, leave the Roll column at the previous value or assign new roll numbers. The form gives you a per-row editable Roll field.
2. Click Promote (the action button at the bottom of the student list).

JoomSchool runs the bulk update and returns to the Promotion view. The selected students no longer appear in the previous year's filter — they're now in the new year, new class.

What carries over and what doesn't

Roll number assignment

Three common roll-number strategies after promotion:

• Keep the same roll — students retain their previous number. Simplest; ensures no reshuffling.
• Renumber within the new section — roll 1 to 30 fresh, in alphabetical order or by previous rank.
• Match an existing pattern — for schools where the roll encodes class info (e.g. "601" for Class 6 student #1), update the roll to match the new class.

The Promotion view exposes an editable Roll column, but for school-wide renumbering most administrators export the new student list to CSV, edit the rolls in a spreadsheet, then re-import via the user-import wizard.

Reverting a promotion

There is no undo button. If a promotion was run by mistake:

1. Identify the affected students (filter the new year/class).
2. For each student, click their record and edit the Year, Class, Section and Division back to the previous values.
3. Save.

For a small number of students this is fine; for a class of 30+, restore the database from the backup taken before the promotion (see the Backup & Maintenance article).

Tips & Best Practices

• Always run a database backup before promoting. Use the Backup view to download CSVs of every user table — restoring takes a minute, mistake-fixing manually takes hours.
• Promote one division at a time. Even though you could select students from multiple divisions, doing them one at a time keeps the visual confirmation manageable.
• Archive (don't delete) graduating students. The records are needed for transcripts and alumni records. Set their Status to Archived rather than Trashed.
• Re-issue library memberships before the new year starts. The old memberships expire with the old academic year.
• Communicate the new roll numbers to parents before the first day of the new year. A surprise roll change confuses everyone.
• Verify a sample after promotion. Open 5 random students from the new year and confirm their class, section, division and parent links look right.

Troubleshooting