How to set up your Grade Profiles
- Lisa Clancy
The Entity Management → Grade Profiles allow an AO user, to set up a profile that incorporates a Grade Outcome e.g. Fail/Pass/Merit/Distinction and within that have the option for an alternative or secondary grade, along with a way to categorise these.
Whatever description you enter into the system, please be aware that there are only 3 grade “values” - Pass/Fail/Void, that epaPRO processes. Void grades are not QA'd.
When setting these up initially, it is a good idea to begin with the basics - e.g. Distinction/Merit/Pass/Fail we would suggest trying these on your Staging or UAT account, so you can test them.
Note:-
“Distinction/Merit/Pass” all have a grade value of “Pass”,
whereas the “Fail” only has a grade value of “Fail”.
The category in all cases will be a “Grade”.
To break this down into more detail, please see the breakdown of a grade profile in the screenshot below;
Distinction, this is the Main or Primary grade.
the second column, where it shows Pass, is the definition of the grade value - Pass/Fail/Void etc
the third column shows the category for the outcome - it would appear under (Grade/Other/Cancellation - non attendance etc). So this example belongs to the category of “Grade”.
Underneath the Primary grade, you have a Secondary field or “alternative grade”, this comes into effect once the resit threshold has been reached on a component (this is set against the component as the Alternative Grade Profile Threshold - see below screenshot).
So using the example above on the “Distinction Example” image, the “alternative grade option” would be a Pass.
Once the basics are set up, you can go back and add in varying layers of complexity, such as Voids and Other Categories
A few points to remember:
Voids will not count towards the number of attempts, compared to a Fail, which does.
The Secondary value for the Grade, should generally match the primary one (as per image above), unless it is set on the Assessment Component - as the “Alternative Grade Profile Threshold”. This is the number of Non-void results, before it uses this secondary grade.
Those grades that are greyed out on the Grade Profile page have apprentices assigned and so cannot be deleted, those that are not greyed out, have yet to have an apprentice on that grade profile entry and so you can remove them.
It is possible to retire one of the values on a Grade profile by marking it as Inactive with the checkbox. By doing so, the Inactive values will be collated at the bottom of the page. This way your reporting will not be affected and apprentices having results added will be able to utilise the same Grade profile.
The Categories can be edited, even when a grade has been used for an apprentice.
When it comes to doing a Result adjustment, you can choose whichever grade you want - alternative or otherwise as per the image below, you are able to see at a glance which is an alternative grade, as it shows you this detail in brackets.
You are also able to select other types of category from a pre-defined list, e.g. “other” or “cancellation - non attendance”
These categories that you see above, correlate with the fields on the right hand side of the Grade profile page - as you can see from the image below, when “Other” is selected .
Below you can see an example of what a Void grade could look like and the outcomes associated with that.
An example of a comprehensive Grade Profile can be seen below.
This may assist you with creating yours - the wording of course is up to you, but it helps show how they could be set up.
Note that the overall Certification Grade is not user configurable, instead this is a system wide fixed list, that is mapped to a list of valid options from the ESFA.