school software, in plain words
Glossary of school software terms.
A plain-language glossary of the terms used in school software, school ERP, fees, exams, data protection and AI in schools, with notes on how EduCampusOS uses them.
- Academic year
- The twelve-month period a school uses for admissions, fees, timetable and results, such as April to March.
- Admission enquiry
- A first request from a family for information or a seat, before an application is made.
- Admissions pipeline
- The path from a first enquiry through application and offer to an enrolled student.
- Audit trail
- A record of who did what and when in a system.
- Bank challan
- A printed deposit slip that a parent takes to a bank to pay fees.
- Biometric attendance
- Recording presence using a fingerprint or face device.
- Cheque clearance tracking
- Recording whether a cheque has cleared, bounced or is pending, so receipts reflect real money.
- Class IQ
- EduCampusOS's AI study assistant, which answers only from a child's own teacher's uploaded syllabus material, at their grade, with the source cited.
- Cloud hosting
- Running software on remote servers managed by the vendor instead of on a computer at the school.
- Concession
- A reduction applied to a student's fees, for example for siblings or merit.
- Consolidated report card
- A single report card combining a student's results across several exams or terms.
- Data Fiduciary
- Under the DPDP Act, the party that decides why and how personal data is processed. A school is the Data Fiduciary for its students' data.
- Data Principal
- Under the DPDP Act, the person the data is about or, for a child, the child's parent or guardian.
- Data Processor
- A party that processes personal data on behalf of a Data Fiduciary. EduCampusOS acts as a Data Processor for school data.
- Data residency
- A requirement about the country or location where data is stored.
- Dedicated infrastructure
- A hosting environment used by one customer only, instead of shared with others.
- DEO (District Education Officer)
- The district-level education authority in Indian states that oversees schools in their district.
- Digital evaluation
- Marking scanned answer sheets on a screen instead of on paper.
- DPDP Act 2023
- India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, the national law on processing personal data.
- Education board
- The authority that sets the syllabus and conducts examinations for the schools that follow it. In India, boards include national boards and state boards.
- Fee component
- A single named charge, such as tuition or transport, that forms part of a fee structure.
- Fee defaulter
- A student whose fees are overdue.
- Fee settlement
- Adjusting charges when something changes mid-year, crediting the unused part of the old charge and billing the new one.
- Fee structure
- The set of charges a class or student group pays, built from fee components.
- Gate pass
- A permission, often a QR code, that lets a visitor or a student leave or enter the campus.
- Gratuity
- A lump-sum benefit paid to an employee after long service, governed in India by the Payment of Gratuity Act, 1972.
- Grounded AI
- AI that answers only from a defined set of source material and can show where an answer came from.
- Hall ticket
- The admit card a student needs to enter an examination.
- HRMS
- Human resource management system: staff records, leave, attendance and payroll.
- Late fee
- An extra charge added when a fee is paid after its due date.
- LMS (learning management system)
- Software that delivers lessons, assignments and learning content to students.
- Multi-branch access
- Giving people access to only their own campus within a group of schools.
- OMR (optical mark recognition)
- Automatic reading of marked bubbles on an answer sheet.
- Paper blueprint
- A template that specifies how many questions of each type and mark value a paper should contain.
- Parent-teacher meeting (PTM)
- A scheduled meeting where a parent and a teacher discuss a child's progress. Software can handle slot booking and reminders.
- Payment gateway
- A service that processes online payments, such as cards and UPI, between a payer and a merchant.
- Payslip
- A statement of a staff member's salary and deductions for a month.
- Proration
- Charging a fee for only the part of the period that applies, such as from the date a student joins or changes route.
- Question bank
- A stored set of questions, tagged by subject and type, used to build papers.
- Reconciliation
- Matching payments received with the invoices they were meant to pay.
- Report Assistant
- EduCampusOS's plain-English reporting feature, which answers from a fixed set of pre-approved report templates and never writes its own queries.
- Report card
- A record of a student's marks and grades for a term or year.
- Revaluation
- A request to have an answer sheet marked again.
- RFID attendance
- Recording presence when a card or tag is read by a reader, often at a gate or bus door.
- Right to erasure
- A person's right to ask for their personal data to be deleted, subject to legal requirements.
- Role-based access
- Limiting what each user can see and do according to their role, such as librarian, teacher or driver.
- RTE (Right to Education) quota
- Seats that private schools in India set aside for eligible children under the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009, which schools track and may claim reimbursement for.
- SaaS (software as a service)
- Software that runs on the vendor's servers and is used through a browser or app, usually for a subscription.
- Scholastic and co-scholastic
- Scholastic refers to academic subjects. Co-scholastic refers to areas such as arts, sports and life skills that are assessed alongside them.
- School ERP
- Software that runs a school's core operations, such as admissions, fees, attendance, exams, HR and transport, on one shared database. Also called a school management system.
- School operating system
- EduCampusOS's term for a school ERP built as one connected system with a single record per student and one login per role.
- Seating arrangement
- The allocation of students to rooms and seats for an examination.
- Settlement
- The transfer of collected payments from a payment gateway to the school's bank account.
- Sibling concession
- A fee reduction for a child whose brother or sister studies in the same school.
- SIS (student information system)
- Software that stores student records and basic administration, such as enrolment, guardians and attendance.
- Substitution
- Assigning another teacher to cover a class when the usual teacher is absent.
- TMS (transport management system)
- Software for school bus routes, vehicles, drivers, student assignment and tracking.
- Two-step sign-in
- Signing in with a password plus a second check, such as a code.
- UPI
- Unified Payments Interface, India's instant bank-to-bank payment system.
- Waitlist
- A queue for a seat, such as a bus seat or a hostel bed, that is filled when one becomes free.
- Wallet
- A balance held for a family inside the fee system, for example from an advance payment, that can be applied to later invoices.
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Published by EduCampusOS, a product of Stavion Technologies, part of Stavion Private Limited. We build school software, so we have a view; the claims here match our platform, pricing and security pages. Worked examples are marked illustrative. Last updated 23 October 2026.