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Tocademy

Guides

How to use Tocademy

Short walkthroughs of how to use Tocademy, from initial setup to staff, payroll and the school's accounts.

Getting started

  • Getting Started

    From registration to a fully set-up school, step by step.

  • Finding Your Way Around

    The sidebar, the top bar, search, the attention bell and the phone menu — where everything lives in Tocademy.

Academics

  • Academic Configuration

    Academic years, classes, subjects, grading scales, and timetables.

  • Subject Teachers

    Choosing who teaches each subject in each arm — for the year, or for one term — and saving many changes at once.

  • Timetable

    Generating a class's week, adding and changing breaks, and changing, moving and swapping lessons by hand.

  • Attendance, Gradebook & Results

    Recording attendance and scores, and the results approval workflow.

  • Assignments and Homework

    Setting homework for an arm, what pupils hand in and how, marking online or on paper, and what families are told.

  • Admissions & Report Cards

    Public applications, student records, ID cards, and report card PDFs.

  • Parent Portal

    Inviting guardians, giving students their sign-in, and what families can see and control.

  • School Analytics

    The Overview, Academics, Finance and Attendance pages: what each figure and chart means, how to filter them, and a worked reading of each.

Your school website

  • Your School Website: Getting Started

    Open the Website area, choose a starting template, add your crest, colours and motto, and set your web address, contact details and notice banner.

  • Editing Your Website Pages

    Add, fill in, move, hide and remove sections on each page, check them on a phone, and let your draft save itself — with a worked example.

  • Publishing and Sharing Your Website

    Check your draft, publish it, share the address by WhatsApp, Facebook, text message or a printed QR poster, and write and publish news.

  • Website Enquiries

    Messages parents send from your website's Contact page: who can read them, replying, marking read, deleting, and the email the school receives.

  • Showing Events on Your Website

    Put open days, entrance examinations and other whole-school or campus events from the school calendar on your website, and see where parents find them.

Fees and payments

  • Setting Up Your Fees

    What you charge, what it costs, and which children it applies to.

  • Taking Payments Online

    Switching on card and transfer payments: terms, your bank account, and who pays the charges.

  • Billing a Term

    Raising the term's bills, and everything you can do to one afterwards.

  • Sibling Discounts

    Giving families with more than one child a reduction on their fees.

  • Recording Payments and Receipts

    Money handed over at the school, the second-signature check, and what parents are given.

  • Chasing Unpaid Fees

    Who is behind, and sending reminders without pestering the same family twice.

  • Refunds, Credits and Disputed Charges

    Money going back out, money waiting to be directed, and a charge a parent has queried with their bank.

  • Knowing Where You Stand

    What has been billed and collected, and when online payments reach your bank.

Exams

  • Online Exams (CBT)

    Setting a computer-based exam, getting pupils signed in, watching it live, and marking and releasing results.

  • Question Sourcing Defaults

    Choosing which classes' and terms' bank questions a new online exam may use, for tests and examinations alike.

  • Exam Security and Safe Exam Browser

    What an online exam can and cannot stop, exemptions, and locking lab computers with Safe Exam Browser.

  • Webcam Photos During Exams

    Optional still photos from candidates' cameras: switching them on, telling families, who sees them and when they are deleted.

  • Watching an Online Exam: the Monitor

    Step by step through the exam monitor — who has started, who left the screen, and how to pause, add time, end, withhold and reinstate, with extra time and exemptions set beforehand.

  • Online Entrance Exams

    An online exam for shortlisted applicants: invitations, private codes, anonymous marking and ranked results.

  • Passages and Structured Questions

    Writing a comprehension passage, poem or table once for several questions, and splitting a theory question into (a), (b), (c) parts with their own marks.

  • Printed Exam Papers

    Building a paper in sections — Objectives, Theory, Comprehension, Essay — from the question bank, then previewing, printing, and downloading it as PDF or Word.

  • Setting an English Paper, Section by Section

    How to set up an English Language paper's sections — Objectives, Comprehension, Summary, Essay / Letter Writing, Oral English — and how to write each kind of question so it prints correctly.

AI assistant

  • Turning On AI Features

    Switch on the AI features your school wants, confirm the data notice for the sensitive ones, give credits to staff, and see what each person has left.

  • AI Lesson Notes

    Draft a lesson note with AI from your topic and duration, check it, copy the parts you want into your note, and save it as your own.

  • AI Report-Card Remarks

    Let the AI draft a class teacher's remark from a pupil's term results, edit it, and use it on the report card — one pupil or the whole class.

  • AI CBT Question Sets

    Generate a set of exam questions with AI for a subject, class and topic, then review each one and add the good ones to your question bank.

  • AI Announcement Drafts

    Type the points a notice must make and let the AI draft its title, the notice and a one-page text message; copy what you want into the form, save, publish, and text it to families if your school allows.

  • AI School Letters

    Draft the text of a consent form, or a trip's consent wording and itinerary, with AI; the record's dates and costs are filled in by Tocademy, never sent to the AI.

  • AI Passages with Questions

    Let the AI write an original reading passage for a class, with five multiple-choice questions on it; approve the passage, then each question, into your question bank.

  • AI Practice-Question Explanations

    Before you release a question to practice, let the AI draft why its stored answer is right; you check it and save it as the question's explanation.

  • AI Question Tagging

    Let the AI suggest a topic from your own topic list, and a difficulty, for up to 20 questions at a time; you apply each one yourself.

  • AI Question Bank Check

    Let the AI check up to 20 questions for ambiguous wording, a doubtful answer key, a give-away option or the wrong difficulty; you decide each flag.

  • AI Class Performance Summaries

    Let the AI write a short summary of a term's results by class arm, subject, girls and boys, from the figures on Analytics › Academics; you accept it to keep it.

  • AI Dashboard Narratives

    Let the AI write the paragraph that opens your Analytics overview for the term, from the school's own figures; you accept it to keep it.

  • AI Learning Gap Plans

    Let the AI write an activity plan for each of a class's weakest topics, from its CBT results by topic, beside the deficiency tracker on Analytics › Academics; you accept it to keep it.

  • AI Principal's Remarks

    Let the AI draft the principal's comment on a report card, summing up the pupil's whole term from the figures Tocademy works out; you edit it and use it.

  • AI Marking Guides

    Let the AI draft a theory question's marking guide — the points a marker looks for and what each is worth — from the question, its parts and its model answer; you edit the points and save them.

  • AI Suggested Marks: Short Answers

    On the CBT marking page, let the AI suggest a mark and a one-line reason for a pupil's short theory answer; you decide the mark and save it yourself.

  • AI Suggested Marks: Essays and Letters

    On the CBT marking page, let the AI suggest a mark and a one-line reason for a pupil's essay or letter, against the marking guide; you decide the mark and save it yourself.

  • AI Announcement Translations

    Put a notice into Hausa, Yoruba, Igbo or Nigerian Pidgin with AI, check it, and save it as the notice's translation; families read it in their own language.

  • AI Replies to Families

    Let the AI draft a reply to a family's message, from what they wrote and the points you give; names reach the AI only as placeholders, and nothing is sent until you press Send.

  • AI Explanations for Declined Refunds

    When the school declines a family's refund request, let the AI word the explanation from the reason you pick; the amounts and dates are filled in by the school, and nothing is decided until you press Decline.

  • AI Statements for Disputed Payments

    When a payer's bank disputes a payment, let the AI draft a neutral statement of what the school's record shows; the amounts, dates and references are filled in by the school, and nothing is recorded until you answer the dispute yourself.

  • AI Schemes of Work

    Plan a class subject's term week by week with AI, from its own syllabus topics and the term's length; check it, change it and save it as the scheme of work.

  • AI Vacancy Adverts

    Draft a job advert for a vacancy from its own details with AI; the number of posts and the closing date are filled in by the school, and the vacancy is posted only through its own approval.

  • AI Appraisal Summaries

    Draft your overall comment on an appraisal review from the scores and comments you saved; the person you review reaches the AI only as a placeholder, and the scores are never changed.

Staff and HR

  • Setting up HR

    Switch on the HR module's building blocks: the menu, the staff catalogues your records are filed under, who may do what, and how long HR records are kept.

  • Approvals and HR Reminders

    Decide who signs off leave, expense claims, payroll and exits, find what is waiting for your decision, and choose which HR reminders the school sends, to whom and how early.

  • Staff Records

    Keep one complete HR record for every employee: complete the records your staff sign-ins created, add staff who never sign in, and look after contracts, documents and the audit trail.

  • Vetting and Compliance

    Record police, reference and other background checks for every employee, and keep certificates, TRCN registrations and school deadlines from lapsing unnoticed.

  • Recruitment and Onboarding

    Fill a post from start to finish: draft and approve the vacancy, receive applications, screen, interview, make an approved offer, turn the successful candidate into a staff record and work through their onboarding checklist.

  • Staff Attendance and Schedules

    Set each employee's working week, record when staff arrive and leave, read the days Tocademy works out from them (late, half day, overtime, approved leave), and arrange cover when a teacher is away.

  • Leave

    Set up leave types, the policy behind each and the school's holidays, then follow a request from the employee through each approver to the balance, the leave calendar and cover for the lessons missed.

  • Appraisals and Teacher Evaluation

    Set up rating scales and a teacher evaluation template, run a termly appraisal cycle with self, principal and peer reviews, get each appraisal approved, and let staff read and acknowledge their result.

  • Training and Professional Development

    Keep a catalogue of the training your school offers, assign it to staff, record when they complete it, track CPD credits and renewals, and let every member of staff see their own training.

  • HR Cases and Discipline

    Handle grievances, complaints, disciplinary matters, investigations and improvement plans fairly and confidentially, from opening the case to its outcome and the employee's disciplinary record.

  • When Staff Leave

    Record a resignation, retirement or other exit, have it approved, clear the employee (handover, school property, departments, documents, exit interview), settle their leave, and see what Tocademy does on their last working day.

  • HR Reports and Dashboard

    Read the school's staff figures at a glance on the HR dashboard, open any of the HR reports, narrow them by campus, department and dates, and pull the figures a board meeting asks for.

  • My HR (Staff Self-Service)

    What every member of staff sees under My HR: your own record and contact details, requests to HR, leave, payslips, documents, loans, expense claims, training, appraisals and attendance.

Payroll

  • Setting Up Payroll

    Tell Tocademy what a salary is made of, which statutory deductions apply and at what rates, the grades your school pays on, and each employee's approved salary, before you run your first payroll.

  • Running Monthly Payroll

    Each month: add the pay period, open and calculate its run, clear what the checks flag, have a second person approve it, finalise it to publish payslips, record the payments and close it — with the October 2026 run at Greenfield Model College as the worked example.

  • Staff Loans, Expense Claims and Benefits

    One-off pay adjustments and arrears, staff loans and salary advances recovered through payroll, staff expense claims reimbursed through payroll or directly, and staff benefit plans with their enrolments.

  • Payroll in the Books

    How a finalised payroll run and its payments post to the ledger, how to see what is still owed to the tax and pension authorities, how to record and void statutory remittances, and where payroll and staff claims are mapped to accounts.

Accounting

  • Setting Up the Books

    Turn on proper double-entry books for the school, then shape the chart of accounts, funds, periods and posting mappings to fit how you work.

  • Journals, the Ledger and Posting

    Post and correct manual journals, read any account's ledger and the trial balance, and keep the automatic postings from fees, payments and other sources flowing.

  • Fee Receivables and Family Statements

    How fee bills and payments reach the books, what each pupil and family owes according to the ledger, and the check that keeps the two in step.

  • Expenses and Suppliers

    Record what the school spends, get a second person to approve it, pay it from a bank or cash account, and keep each supplier's bill straight.

  • Bank Reconciliation

    Import your bank statement, match each line to the books, deal with what only the bank knows about, and keep a dated record that the two agree.

  • Fixed Assets and Tax Codes

    Enter your own VAT and withholding-tax rates, keep a register of buses, buildings and equipment, and let depreciation post itself every month.

  • Budgets and Financial Reports

    Plan the year month by month, compare the plan with what really happened, and read the statements, ageings and audit records your board and auditor ask for.

Questions

  • Frequently Asked Questions

    Short answers to the questions schools ask most, each pointing to the guide that says more.