Skip to content
← All guides
For management / admins

Setting up lessons, books & subjects

Everything a student is marked on comes from a framework you set up once in Admin → Education. That can mean dedicated Qaida, Nazra or Hifz pathways, subjects such as Fiqh and Arabic, or a curriculum made entirely from subjects. This guide shows you how to choose the right mode and add a framework, using an Arabic class that follows the Madina Arabic Reader book series as an example.

1. What a framework is

A framework is simply a book or lesson set, broken into a list. Each row in the list has two parts:

  • Area: the chapter, section or unit (e.g. Book 1, or Chapter 1: Taharah).
  • Sub-item: the individual lesson inside that chapter (e.g. Lesson 3: The letter ba). This one is optional, so leave it blank for books that are just a flat list of chapters.

Teachers then rate a student on each lesson using the same four levels everywhere: Excellent, Good, Developing, Needs attention. You don’t set the ratings; they’re built in. You only provide the list of lessons.

2. Choose your curriculum mode

Start with the Curriculum mode card in Admin → Education:

  • Quran and subjects: for a traditional madrassa where every student follows one dedicated Qaida, Nazra or Hifz track, with optional subjects alongside it.
  • Subjects only: for an Arabic school, a subject-led weekend school or another subject-led programme. Students do not need a Quran track; add every course, including Quran Reading or Tajweed where relevant, as a subject.

Changing mode hides or restores the specialised Quran pathways but never deletes their frameworks, student assignments or progress history. If you restore Quran and subjects, assign a Quran track to any students enrolled while those pathways were hidden.

Tracks and subjects

In Quran and subjects mode, attach a book to a track only when it is the book the child reads for Qaida, Nazra or Hifz. Anything taught alongside that path is a subject. In subjects-only mode, every framework belongs to a subject. A class can have several subjects in either mode.

There is no separate “language” setting. The language of a book simply lives in its name, so call the framework something clear, like “Madina Arabic Reader (Book 1)” or “Urdu Qaida”.

3. Prepare the lesson list (CSV)

The lesson list is uploaded as a CSV file, a plain spreadsheet you can make in Excel, Numbers or Google Sheets and export as .csv. The first line must be exactly:

area,sub_item
Book 1,Lesson 1: The Arabic alphabet
Book 1,Lesson 2: Short vowels (harakat)
Book 1,Lesson 3: Joining letters
Book 2,Lesson 1: Sun and moon letters
Book 2,Lesson 2: Simple sentences

A few rules keep uploads clean:

RuleWhy
First line is exactly area,sub_itemThe upload is rejected otherwise.
Exactly two columns per rowAvoid commas inside a lesson name; use a hyphen or colon instead, or a comma will split the row.
area is required, sub_item can be emptyLeave the second column blank for a flat list of chapters.
Order mattersRows appear to teachers in the order you list them.
Under 500 KB, at least one rowPlenty for even a long syllabus.

You can start from the downloadable template on the Education page.

4. Worked example: Arabic lessons (Madina Arabic Reader)

Say your school teaches Arabic from the Madina Arabic Reader. Whether Arabic is your whole curriculum or is taught alongside Quran, set it up as a subject. Here’s the full process in Admin → Education:

  1. In the Subjects section, type Arabic (or Madina Arabic Reader) into New subject name and click Add subject.
  2. Scroll up to the upload row and enter a book / lesson-set name, for example Madina Arabic Reader (Book 1).
  3. In “Which track or subject is this for?” choose your new Arabic subject (under the Subjects heading in the dropdown).
  4. Choose your CSV file and click Upload CSV. This creates the book but doesn’t switch it on yet.
  5. Go back down to the Arabic subject’s card. Pick the framework you just uploaded, choose All classes or Specific classes (tick the classes that study Arabic), and click Activate.

Arabic now appears as a tab in each of those classes in the teacher Progress panel, and teachers can start recording against the Madina Reader lessons.

5. Worked example: swapping a Qaida or Nazra book

If instead you want to change the actual Qaida book your madrassa reads (say, to a specific Urdu Qaida), that book is the Quran-reading path, so it attaches to a track:

  1. Upload the CSV exactly as above, but in “Which track or subject?” choose Qaida (under Quran tracks).
  2. In the Qaida card at the top, select your new book from the dropdown and click Activate. It becomes the madrassa-wide default for Qaida.
  3. If just one class uses a different book, leave the madrassa default as is and set that class’s book in Class overrides instead.

6. Activating, overrides, and removing

A quick reference for the buttons on the Education page:

  • Activate: makes a book recordable for teachers. Uploading alone does nothing until you activate.
  • All classes vs specific classes (subjects): activate a subject for every class, or only the ones you tick.
  • Class overrides (tracks): give a single class a different Quran book from the madrassa default.
  • Deactivate: hides a subject from the Progress panel but keeps its history.
  • Archive: fully removes a subject everywhere, including the parent portal.

That’s it. Set a framework up once, activate it for the right classes, and teachers can record progress that adult learners and authorised guardians see in their portal.