Until recently Classfold knew about four kinds of institute, and the type you chose changed almost nothing you could see. It now records eight, and the choice does real work on your console from the first login.
The eight types
School. College or university. Coaching institute. Arts academy. Play school or preschool. Special-needs school. Private tutor or small batch. Other.
You pick one when your institute is created, and an administrator can change it later in settings.
What the type actually changes
The words. A school's console says Class, Section, Period, Exam, Student, Parent, Teacher, Principal. An arts academy's says Level, Batch, Class, Assessment, Instructor, Director, and Discipline instead of Subject. A play school says Child, Group, Activity, Session, Observation, and Progress report instead of Result. A coaching institute says Batch. The vocabulary comes from one table on the server, so every screen, every exported sheet and both mobile apps use the same word for the same thing.
You can override any of those words for your own institute. If your academy calls a level a Grade, set it once and the console follows.
The starting module set. A school opens with everything: fees, attendance, exams, transport, hostel, library, inventory, HR and payroll, certificates, messaging. A play school opens without exams and without library or hostel, because it does not need them. An arts academy opens without transport and hostel but keeps inventory, which is where instruments and costumes live. The set is a starting point, not a cage: an administrator can switch any module on or off afterwards.
Nothing about who can see what. This is worth saying plainly. The type decides vocabulary and which modules appear. It is never a permission. Who may view, create, edit, delete or export in each module comes from the staff permission map, and the server checks every request against it regardless of what the console chose to show.
What it does not change
The underlying structure is the same for every type today. An arts academy gets Levels and Batches as names for the containers a school calls Classes and Sections — not a different scheduling model. There is no per-session timetable with make-up classes, no rubric-based assessment, no daily activity or check-out log, and no individual education plan. Those are real differences between these institutions and Classfold does not pretend to have them yet.
What you do get on day one is the operational core, in your own words: student records and admissions, attendance with exports and holidays, a fee engine with instalments and concessions and one ledger across counter cash, UPI and online payments, exams and results where the type uses them, certificates, staff and payroll, inventory, and messaging to families over WhatsApp, SMS and email under your institute's own name.
Picking the right one
Choose the type whose vocabulary your staff already speak. That is the whole test. A tuition centre running two batches of thirty is a coaching institute even if it is registered as a school; a music academy teaching graded levels is an arts academy even if it also runs a nursery section. If two fit, pick the one your office uses most and override the handful of words that do not match.
If you are not sure, ask us on the demo call — we will set it with you rather than guessing from your name.