Results and publication

A result is the product's central claim: it is calculated from the marks and the school's own grading policy, ranked within a scope, and published as something a parent can be shown. This page describes each of those three steps.

A result is derived

Nothing types a final average. The marks are the input, the policy is the rule, and the result is the output. The policy is per subject and per term: which assessments count, what each weighs, the precision a mark is reported at, and the rounding that is applied.

Because the arithmetic is stated rather than implied, a result can be recomputed later and it will agree. That is the property an inspector is really asking about when they ask how a grade was arrived at.

The ranking has a scope

A rank is only meaningful inside something. The product ranks within the scope the school defines: a class, a year group, or the whole school. The same student can be third in their class and fortieth in their year, and both are true.

Stating the scope matters because a rank without one is a number a reader will interpret differently from the number next to it.

Publication is a version

Publishing freezes a result set. What a parent is shown is the version that was issued on that date, with the marks as they stood when it was calculated. A later change does not edit it.

That is deliberate, and it is the difference between a published report and a draft: the school can always say what it issued, even after a correction.

A correction after publication

A correction changes the marks and therefore the result the school would publish now. It does not change what was published. Both exist: the issued version, and the current one, and a reader with the right permission can see the difference.

The trail a correction leaves is described on running a term, which is where most corrections actually happen.