How to prepare your school data before your first Skejuu session

Skejuu does not ask you to upload anything. You describe your school out loud or by typing, and it builds the structure as you talk. So "preparing your data" here does not mean formatting a file. It means knowing what you are going to say.

The administrators who finish fastest all did the same thing first: they gathered five things onto one page.

The five things to have in front of you

1. Your class groups, named the way your school names them. JSS1A, Form 3 Science, Year 8 Blue. Whatever you actually call them. Do not translate into anything tidier, because you will have to translate back when you read the printed timetable.

2. Your teacher list with subjects attached. One line per teacher: name, subjects they are qualified to take, and days they are on site. Part-time staff are the ones that cause trouble later, so mark them clearly.

3. Your day shape. How many periods, how long each one runs, and where break, assembly, and closing sit. If Friday is shorter than the rest of the week, that counts as part of the shape.

4. Subject loads per class. How many periods a week each subject gets for each class group, and which of those need to be doubles.

5. Room requirements. Only the ones that genuinely restrict you. Labs, the computer room, the studio. If a subject can happen in any classroom, it does not need a line.

That is the whole list. If you have those five on a page, you have enough to generate.

How to say it

You do not need to structure your sentences. Say things the way you would say them to a new colleague:

"We run 8 periods a day, Monday to Friday, with Friday ending after period 6."

"Mrs. Adeyemi takes Biology and Agric, and she is only in on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday."

"JSS2A and JSS2B both get four Maths periods a week, one of them a double."

Order does not matter. You can give the teachers first, the periods last, and go back to add a rule you forgot. Nothing needs repeating once it is in.

Watch a session run start to finish

If you would rather see it than read about it, this is a full timetable being built from nothing in under two minutes. Note how little gets typed, and how the understood so far panel fills in on the right as the description goes on.

Clean these up before you start, not after

A few things quietly cost the most time when they are wrong, and they are cheap to fix beforehand.

Inconsistent names. If one list says "Mr. J. Okafor" and another says "Joseph Okafor", you now have two teachers. Pick one form of each name and stay with it.

Subjects that are really the same subject. "Maths" and "Mathematics" in the same session will be treated as separate subjects. Same for "PE" and "Physical Education".

Stale staffing. The single most common source of rework is a teacher list from last term. Confirm resignations, new hires, and leave before the session, not during it.

Rules that live in someone's head. The senior teacher who never takes first period. The lab that is closed Wednesday mornings. These are real constraints, and Skejuu will happily hold them, but only if someone says them out loud.

Check the panel as you go

Everything Skejuu picks up appears in the understood so far panel while you talk, and voice input shows a confirmation card before anything commits. Read them. Correcting a misheard class name in the panel takes two seconds. Finding it after you have generated and exported takes considerably longer.

Then generate early

You do not need the complete picture before generating. Generate as soon as you have your class groups, teachers, and day shape in. You get a partial timetable with the gaps marked, and it is far easier to see what is missing from a draft grid than from a list. Add the remaining constraints and generate again, or just fix it in the editor.

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Fifteen minutes of gathering saves the afternoon. Get the five things onto one page, say them in whatever order they come, and let the editor handle the rest.