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.

Gracious Schools CBC scales

What’s new — 19 October 2026: Gracious Schools uses CBC grading records throughout. Play Group, PP1, PP2 and Grades 1–6 use EE, ME, AE, BE without number suffixes, with four-level points 4, 3, 2, 1. Grades 7–9 retain the eight numbered levels, including ME1 and ME2. Subject and overall bands use the same class-specific format; existing mark boundaries are retained.

The subject, overall, principal and class-teacher remark banks follow these labels: lower-school remarks read, for example, MEETING EXPECTATION, while junior-school remarks retain MEETING EXPECTATION 1 and MEETING EXPECTATION 2. Each class must select CBC, including its grading category. Grades 10–12 retain their existing CBC configuration; Grades 11–12 currently have no configured bands.

Saved results and existing PDFs are not rewritten by a settings correction. Re-analyse the relevant exam and regenerate its reports to apply these settings.

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: opening, mid-term, clinic and closing. Pick a class because different classes can use different dates.

These four milestones are shared with School Calendar & Events. Saving a report date creates or updates the matching class calendar entry. Creating an Opening, Mid-Term, Clinic or Closing milestone in the calendar updates Report Dates for its selected class; choose All Classes to update every active class. Ordinary events such as Career Day, an AGM or a sports fixture stay calendar-only.

Milestones are single-day entries. They also appear in parent WhatsApp calendar answers, together with the other upcoming events that apply to the learner’s class. Set them before generating reports: correcting a printed date still means regenerating and reprinting the report.

Herald internal term-report profiles

What’s new — 12 October 2026: Herald’s Years 1–11 have explicit school/class profiles for internal numeric assessments. See the assignments in Academics → Settings → Internal term-report grading.

Classes	Stage	Report scale	Attainment bands
Years 1–2	KS1	50	0 Unclassified; 1–10 Basic; 11–20 Aspiring; 21–30 Good; 31–40 High; 41–50 Outstanding
Years 3–6	KS2	50	Same subject bands as KS1, with a distinct KS2 heading
Years 7–9	KS3	100	Below 5 not classified; 5–14 Basic; 15–24 Aspiring; 25–44 Good; 45–69 High; 70–100 Outstanding
Years 10–11	KS4	100	Below 20 Foundation; 20 to below 40 Developing; 40 to below 60 Secure; 60 to below 80 Advanced; 80–100 Exceptional

The entered score and assessment maximum are preserved. Report marks are scaled to this school report maximum: for example, 78/100 is 39/50 on a primary internal report. This is a school report score, not a Cambridge standardised Checkpoint result. Primary fractional marks use upper limits 10, 20, 30 and 40; zero is Unclassified. KS3 and KS4 fractional marks use the lower cutoff of the next band without overlapping. KS3 below 5 has no supplied rule and remains Not classified pending school policy. An empty score remains unrecorded, and an entered zero is a real result.

Running analysis uses these profiles instead of the overlapping legacy letter bands for the configured internal assessments. Generated subject remarks follow the awarded band. A typed subject remark is preserved; only blank or previously generated remarks are refreshed. This does not infer behaviour or attendance from a subject mark.

These assignments do not change other international schools, FS1/FS2, Years 12/13, CBC or 8-4-4. Official Cambridge Checkpoint, IGCSE, AS and A Level categories retain their own grading; do not label an official exam as an internal normal assessment. Keep imported official standardised scores and grades distinct from internal marks.