How to set up your Grade Profiles from release 5.10.0 onwards
- Lisa Clancy
In release 5.10.0 we made a number of User Interface (UI) changes, in order to make this screen easier to use, based on your feedback.
The Entity Management → Grade Profiles allows 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.
Changes to functionality:
Help Section: A collapsed section has been added at the top of the screen. This details some basic information about each of the fields on the screen, as well as including the option to view an example of a grade profile.
Column Headings: There are now column headings above each of the various fields on the screen to indicate what each area of the screen is for, the headings currently on the screen are:
Category
Type
Description
Active
Delete
Value Layout: We made changes to the layout of the grade profile values to make them clearer and easier to digest. We have moved the category to be first, renamed secondary to alternative so that it ties in with the field on the Assessment Component
and also made various other visual changes to spacing and layout to help break up the values.
Inactive Values: When loading the page, the currently inactive grade profile values will be put into a separate, collapsed section at the bottom of the screen. This should reduce the number of values on screen and break up the list.
List Order: The grade profile values (under the Category column heading) will now show in the same order that you see in the Add Results screen. If two values have the same category, they will be further sorted alphabetically by their description. Example if you have two “Grade” values, one with a primary value of Fail and the other Pass. They will be sorted alphabetically by their primary field description e.g. Fail.
Grade Profile Values Section: When clicking the add new value button, the newly added value will be put into a new section, above the button, dedicated to new grade profile values. This should make it clearer which values are currently being added. After saving the changes the new values will be added to the current list of grade profile values.
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;
Under the Category column this 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”.
Under the Type column, where it shows Pass, this is the definition of the grade value e.g. Pass/Fail/Void etc
Under the Description column where you see Distinction, this is the Main or Primary grade.
Below the Primary Pass grade, you have the “Alternative” field, 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 “Example of a Distinction Grade” image, the “alternative grade option” would be a Fail.
Once the basics are set up, you can go back and add in varying layers of complexity, such as Voids and Other Categories such as Cancellations etc
A few points to remember:
Voids will not count towards the number of attempts, compared to a Fail, which does.
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 in the category column on 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.
Although the layout below is from the former screen format, the values would be the same.
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.