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Standardising a tiered assessment

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Tiered assessments will either have Foundation and Higher assessments, or will have Foundation, Higher and Core assessments. Depending on whether there is a core paper in common will determine the calculations that Smartgrade will run.

Standardising a tiered assessment without core paper(s)

Once teachers have submitted marks for an assessment, you can use Smartgrade's standardisation engine to create a Smartgrade. This is a grade based on a scale with categories and grade boundaries controlled by you. You can have up to three Smartgrades in total. 

Find the relevant assessment in the My Assessments table in the My Assessments module, click the 3 dots in the Actions menu and select Standardise:

When you select Standardise, you'll see marks represented on a bar chart. On tiered papers, you'll see a dropdown in the top right hand corner allowing you to switch between the "Foundation" and "Higher" standardisations, like this:

If the SMARTGRADE CATEGORIES button is greyed out, click Enable to the right-hand side. Once enabled, the SMARTGRADE CATEGORIES modal will open. This screen allows you to adjust the categories and grade boundaries used to set your Smartgrade for the assessment. A dropdown lets you switch easily between the Foundation and Higher papers without exiting the modal, so you can set boundaries for both as part of the same process.

The standardisation modal looks like this:

In the Standardisation modal, you can:

  1. Adjust the number of Smartgrade categories you wish to use via the selection box above the table.
  2. Rename your Smartgrade by giving it an alias.
  3. Adjust the grade boundaries using the Boundary Raw Score column.
  4. Rename the Smartgrade categories using the Smartgrade Name column.
  5. Choose which Smartgrades should apply to which paper, using the checkboxes in the standardisation modal. For example, in the screenshot above a 5 category scale is selected, and the Foundation paper has been set up only to have the options of grades 1-4, as category 5 has been deselected. In this example, you can also tell that category 1 has been deselected from the Higher paper, as colour coding is used to show which grades apply to which papers. (Blue = Foundation; Yellow = Higher; Mixed = Foundation + Higher).

Note: There is an optional "0" category, which is helpful if you want to add a "U" style grade which can be used across both tiers. To activate the category, simply change the Boundary Raw Score from the default of "NA" to "0". 

Please note that when standardising tiered papers without core questions, you only get a Smartgrade; you do not get a standardised score or percentile rank, as the underlying dataset does not allow this to be calculated across all students.

Once the Smartgrades are configured, ensure you click CONFIRM on the Smartgrade Categories screen. This will return you to the Standardise screen, where you can, if you wish, configure up to 2 more Smartgrades. Clicking CONFIRM  in this screen will standardise your assessment.

Standardising a tiered assessment with core paper(s)

When students sit a tiered assessment with a core paper(s) Smartgrade is able to calculate the following grades:

  • Percentile rank - the percentile of a child based on the sample of students that sat the assessment.
  • Smartgrade - a grade based on a scale with categories and grade boundaries controlled by you. The school or MAT Smartgrade is optional and can be disabled if not required. You can have up to three Smartgrades in total. 

Standardising a tiered assessment with core paper(s) without calculating a Smartgrade

Find the relevant assessment in the My Assessments table in the My Assessments module, click the 3 dots in the Actions menu and select Standardise:

 

When you select Standardise, you'll see marks represented on a bar chart. To calculate the percentile ranks only, simply click CONFIRM and agree to the pop-up message.

 

 

Standardising a tiered assessment with core paper(s) using Smartgrade(s)

Find the relevant assessment in the My Assessments table in the My Assessments module, click the 3 dots in the Actions menu and select Standardise:

 

When you select Standardise, you'll see marks represented on a bar chart. On tiered papers, you'll see a dropdown in the top right hand corner allowing you to switch between the "Foundation" and "Higher" standardisations, like this:

If the SMARTGRADE CATEGORIES button is greyed out, click Enable to the right-hand side. Once enabled, the SMARTGRADE CATEGORIES modal will open. This screen allows you to adjust the categories and grade boundaries used to set your Smartgrade for the assessment. A dropdown lets you switch easily between the Foundation and Higher papers without exiting the modal, so you can set boundaries for both as part of the same process.

The standardisation modal looks like this:

In the Standardisation modal, you can:

  1. Adjust the number of Smartgrade categories you wish to use via the selection box above the table.
  2. Rename your Smartgrade by giving it an alias.
  3. Adjust the grade boundaries using the Boundary Raw Score column.
  4. Rename the Smartgrade categories using the Smartgrade Name column.
  5. Choose which Smartgrades should apply to which paper, using the checkboxes in the standardisation modal. For example, in the screenshot above a 5 category scale is selected, and the Foundation paper has been set up only to have the options of grades 1-4, as category 5 has been deselected. In this example, you can also tell that category 1 has been deselected from the Higher paper, as colour coding is used to show which grades apply to which papers. (Blue = Foundation; Yellow = Higher; Mixed = Foundation + Higher).

Note: There is an optional "0" category, which is helpful if you want to add a "U" style grade which can be used across both tiers. To activate the category, simply change the Boundary Raw Score from the default of "NA" to "0". 

Once the Smartgrades are configured, ensure you click CONFIRM on the Smartgrade Categories screen. This will return you to the Standardise screen, where you can, if you wish, configure up to 2 more Smartgrades. Clicking CONFIRM  in this screen will standardise your assessment.

 

 

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