Your first carnival: from school setup to ready to run

Check your school setup, students, events, entrants and programme before the first event.

Preparing your first carnival involves a few connected tasks: setting up your school, adding students and events, then getting the programme ready for staff. This checklist takes you through them in that order. You can work through it over several sessions, and each link gives the steps for the task.

If your school has used Houseplay before, you can start with last year’s carnival and update it for this year.

Set up your school

• Check your school settings. For a new school, complete the setup wizard. Otherwise, check your houses, year levels, event types and scoring settings in Settings.
• Check the student list. Add students or import them from CSV or Excel. Check names, year levels and houses. For age-grouped events, check dates of birth too.

Build the carnival

• Create the carnival. Choose its type, dates and grade or age grouping. You cannot switch between Grade and Age once events exist.
• Add events. Choose how to add events, then check their groups and scoring methods. For heats and finals, use an event pool.
• Choose who will take part. Choose competitors for each event, or add nominations if you use pools. Compare the lists with your entry sheets.
• Arrange the programme. Set the order and times for each day. Check venues and lanes where needed.

Prepare the information and access staff need

• Choose how results will be recorded. Agree who will enter results and whether officials will work live or use paper.
• Prepare the reports. Choose the programme, result forms and student sheets your staff need.
• Check staff access. Have everyone who will enter results sign in and open the carnival.

Before the first event, use the carnival-day readiness checklist.