JoomSchool - Manage Exams & Grades

Set up the exams the school holds and the grading scales that translate raw marks into letter grades and points. Without these, the marks view has nothing to record against and the result sheet can't compute grades.

Overview

Two distinct concepts feed the marks-and-results pipeline:

• Exam — a single scheduled assessment (Mid-term, Final, Quiz 3, Practical Test). Each exam has a name, a date and an optional comment block. Marks are recorded against an exam.
• Grade — the letter or symbol (A+, A, B, C, F) and the corresponding numeric point that a particular range of raw marks produces. Grades are grouped into Grade Categories, which act as named scales.

A school usually defines several exams in a year (Mid-term, Final, Project work, ...) but only one or two grade categories (the standard 100-mark scale, perhaps a separate scale for sports or a 5-point GPA). Once an exam is linked to a class, and the class is linked to a grade category, the result sheet can convert raw marks into grades automatically.

Prerequisites

• The academic structure must already exist (classes, sections, divisions, subjects). See the Manage Academic article.
• Each class should already have a default grade system assigned (the Default Grade System field on the class form). If you skipped that step, come back here after creating your grade category.

Exams

The Exams view lives at Components → JoomSchool → Exams. It lists every exam ever created, with filters for the current academic year and class.

Creating an exam

1. Open Components → JoomSchool → Exams.
2. Click New to open the form.
3. Fill in:

1. Click Save & Close.

Editing or unpublishing an exam

Click the row in the list view to open the edit form. Unpublishing an exam hides it from the result sheet and from the marks entry view, but the saved marks remain in the database — so re-publishing later restores everything.

Filtering by year

The toolbar Year Switcher applies to the Exams list — you'll only see exams whose linked records (marks / classes) are stamped for the active year. To see exams from a previous year, switch the year first.

Exam term

There is no separate "Exam Term" admin view in JoomSchool. The concept of a term (Mid-term vs Final, Term 1 vs Term 2) is handled at the exam level via the Exam Name field. Schools that distinguish terms typically prefix the exam name (e.g. "T1 Mid-term", "T2 Final") so the result sheet groups them naturally.

Grade Categories

A Grade Category is a named grading scale. The default install seeds one called the Standard 100-mark scale. Schools that use multiple scales (different scales for theory and practical, or a separate 5.0 GPA scale) define one category per scale.

Where to find Grade Categories

The list view is reachable from the toolbar of the Grade view, or directly via Components → JoomSchool → Grade Categories (this submenu item appears in the admin sidebar of the Grade view).

Creating a Grade Category

1. Open the Grade Categories list.
2. Click New.
3. Fill in:

1. Click Save & Close.

After saving, you can attach grades (next section) to this category.

Grades

A Grade is a single band within a category — e.g. "A+ between 90 and 100 marks worth 5 points". The combination of grade name + lower bound + upper bound + point value is what produces the letter grade on a result sheet.

Where to find Grades

Components → JoomSchool → Grade. The list shows every grade defined across every category, with the parent category in one of the columns.

Default grade scale (seeded by the installer)

The install creates a working scale so the system is usable immediately. The default grades attached to the Standard 100-mark category are:

These are editable. Most schools tweak the bands at least once to match their internal policy.

Creating a grade

1. Open the Grade list.
2. Click New.
3. Fill in:

1. Click Save & Close.

Avoiding overlap and gaps

Two pitfalls that produce wrong-looking result sheets:

• Overlapping bands — if A+ is 80–100 and A is 75–80, a student with 80 marks could match either. The result sheet uses the first match it finds; the row order in the database becomes the tiebreaker.
• Gaps in coverage — if D is 33–39 and F is 0–30, a student with 31 or 32 marks gets no grade and the result sheet shows a blank.

Always check that your bands are contiguous and non-overlapping after editing.

Linking a class to a grade scale

The class form has a Default Grade System field on the Class Profile tab. The dropdown lists every Grade Category. Pick the scale that should be used for that class, save, and result sheets for students in that class will use the matching grades.

If a class points to a category that has no grades attached, result sheets will show raw marks but no letter grades.

Tips & Best Practices

• Define the grade category and grades before creating classes, so the class dropdown is not empty.
• Lock the grading scale before publishing marks for parents. Editing a band after marks are visible can change a student's grade overnight, which looks bad to parents.
• Use the Comment field on grades ("Excellent", "Needs improvement") so the result sheet has more than just a letter — parents appreciate the descriptor.
• Don't reuse exam names across years. Even though year filtering hides them, an admin browsing the trash can be confused by "Final" appearing six times. Prefix with the year ("2025 Final").
• Think about historical comparisons. If you change the grade bands, last year's result sheets re-render using the new bands, which can rewrite history. If you must change the scale, archive the old grade category and attach a new one to next year's classes.

Troubleshooting