Table design question

[Stacey]

Hi there,
I am VERY new to working with Access. I am in the
process of creating a database for an elementary school
that will house data for each student, for each grade
level (ex: 1st grade data, 2nd grade data). Would it be
better to house all of the data in one Student Information
table? Or to have separate tables for each grade level
that houses the data specific to each grade level? If one
way is better than the other, could you share with me the
reasoning behind it? Thanks for any feedback.

 

[Allen Browne]

*Definately* one table, with a field to indicate the grade.

If you have a table for each year, you will have to enter everyone again
into the next table? And would you find Suzie if you did not know which
grade she was in?

It may be worth creating one table to hold the children's name and address
details, and a related table to hold their academic history. The fields for
the related table would be something like this:
ChildID foreign key to the record in the main table (which child).
Grade which grade the child is in.
Teacher the main teacher the child has.

Then, each year you can add another record to this table, and have a
complete history of how long the child has bee in your school, and who their
teachers were over the years.