Subject: Data Model for School Reporting in Chile
Hi,
I work in a small school down here in Chile. I have some experience in IT, mainly networking, and some rough idea of databases (and have been reading up). 
I’m trying to set one up to record subject (or courses) reports. That is, teachers have to write a short report of each of their pupils in their subject, every term, every year.
Now, I have looked at other examples and suggestions, but none seem to fit quite right, and I have not been able to work out the proper schema logic.
I was wondering if you could point me in the right direction.
The main problem I have is fitting the real world model into the logic model. I have tried to think “out the box” by not limiting myself strictly to how things look “on the ground”
… even so, can’t quite get it.
The way the school is organized is as follows:
There is the school year (March to December here).
Then there are the terms (although students remain in the clases through the year and don’t change subjects).
Then we have “yeargroups” (1st, 2nd, 3rd…. all the way 12th)
Then we have subjects in a “yeargroup”. Here I have to use different terms, because, although a subject is referred to on its own, it’s actually taught by a teacher. 
So I usually create a “course”, which is a subject taught by a teacher for that year.
Then we have the students that belong to a yeargroup. At the end of the year they move up to the next year group.
Finally, the reports, that belong to a student in a term and yeargroup, to a particular course (subject and teacher).
Also, I struggle to split the data so that I keep integrity for the reports that have been written already, so that when a students moves up a year group, 
their reports for last year remain, same for courses.
Any ideas or tips are most appreciated,
Regards,
Christopher Eason.
Caernarfon College.