Running a term

A term runs in a fixed order, and the order is the product's main piece of advice. Follow it once and the rest of the year is repetition; skip a step and the term is recoverable, but it is work.

Before the term

Three things exist before a mark is entered: the year with its terms, the classes and subjects the year offers, and the placements that put students in a class. If any of those is missing, the term cannot start, which is deliberate: a mark with no class belongs to nothing.

A teacher is assigned to a class and a subject together, and that pair is what scopes what the teacher sees. A teacher is never assigned to "Mathematics" in the abstract.

During the term

Marks are entered against an assessment, and every entry records who entered it and when. Two rules make the middle of a term calm rather than busy:

1. Enter marks as they are marked. A term's marks entered in the last week are marks entered under pressure.
2. Correct through a request, not an edit. A change to a mark is a record with a reason, and on the plans that include review, it is approved by someone other than the person who raised it.

The common mistake

The mistake that costs the most is publishing before the marks are final. Publishing freezes a result set: the result a parent is shown is the version that was issued, and a later correction produces a new version rather than editing it.

That is a feature, and it still hurts if a term publishes early. Check the marks first, then publish once.

At the end

At the end of the term, the results are calculated from the marks and the school's grading policy, ranked within their scope, and published. The published snapshot is what a promotion decision reads from, and it is why the academic year is built as a record rather than as a set of files.