Grading, categories and remarks

These are the settings the whole assessment year runs on. Set them once, before the first exam, and leave them alone — changing a grade boundary mid-year silently changes grades on exams that were already published.

Grading system

Go to Academics → Grading System.

Select Add New to define each grade.

Field	Notes
Grade	The symbol printed on the report card — A, B+, or a CBC performance level.
From / To	The mark range, as a percentage. Ranges must not overlap or leave gaps.
Points	The value used for points-based aggregates such as KCSE mean grade.
Comment	A default comment attached to that grade.

Check for gaps

The most common grading fault is a gap between bands — 59 to 60 with nothing covering 59.5, or one band ending at 49 and the next starting at 51. Marks falling in a gap produce a blank grade on the report card. Read the finished table from bottom to top and confirm each band starts exactly where the one below it ended.

Schools running more than one system — for example a primary and a secondary section — can hold several grading systems and attach the right one to each exam category.

Exam categories

A category classifies exams and determines how they combine. Go to Academics → Exam Categories.

Typical categories are Opener, Mid-term, End-term, CAT and Mock. The category carries the weighting used when several exams are combined into a term average — for example Opener 20%, Mid-term 30%, End-term 50%. If your school reports only the end-term result, weight that at 100% and leave the rest at zero.

Categories are also how exam groups under Settings → Exam Groups decide which exams belong together for combined analysis.

Remarks

Academics → Remarks is the comment bank teachers pick from when writing report cards.

Remarks are banded, so a teacher opening the comment box on an A student is offered comments appropriate to an A. Write enough of them that a class of forty does not receive the same four sentences — a dozen per band is a reasonable target.

Teachers can always type a free comment instead. The bank is there to save time, not to restrict them.

Report colours

Academics → Report Colours controls the colour coding on printed report cards.

Colour makes a report card readable at a glance, but remember that many schools print in black and white. Do not rely on colour alone to convey whether a result is good — the grade symbol should carry that on its own.

Report dates

Academics → Report Dates sets the dates printed on report cards: the closing date, the opening date for next term, and the date the report was issued.

Set these before generating reports. They are printed as recorded here, and correcting them means reprinting.