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Standardise an assessment

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Once teachers have submitted marks for an assessment, you can use Smartgrade's standardisation engine to create the following calculated grades:

  • 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. 
  • Percentile rank - the percentile of a child based on the sample of students that sat the assessment.
  • Standardised score - a standardised score (a number between 60 and 140 with the mean being 100 and a standard deviation of 15, so that scores of 70-130 are two standard deviations either side of the mean), based on the sample of students that sat the assessment.

NB: You can run standardisation multiple times for an assessment. Whenever you run standardisation, any calculated grades that were previously created will be overwritten. 

 

Global vs MAT / School Standardisations

There are two types of standardisation in Smartgrade:

  1. Standardisations across your school/MAT. If you've created an assessment for use across your school/MAT only, this is the only standardisation you'll have available to you. The percentile rank and standardised score generated by Smartgrade in this instance are NOT nationally standardised; they are standardised across your dataset, which is not necessarily nationally representative. 
  2. Global standardisations. Where an assessment is set up to be used by any MAT (e.g. assessments from our partners such as White Rose Maths, Headstart and Ark Curriculum Plus), you will see both a school/MAT standardisation AND a global standardisation. The global standardisation uses all participating schools, including those outside your MAT, and cannot be edited by you. The school/MAT standardisation is based on your internal data only, and the Smartgrade can be edited by you to fit with your school grading policy.

 

How to standardise an assessment

Find the relevant assessment in the My Assessments table in the My Assessments module, then select the Standardise action (see screenshot):

mceclip0.png

 

When you select Standardise, you'll see marks represented on a bar chart. If the assessment is global, you'll also see a dropdown in the centre allowing you to switch between the "SCHOOL" or "MAT" and the "Global" standardisation (see below):

 

NB if you're standardising a tiered assessment, you'll also see a dropdown allowing you to switch between tiers - see this article for more details on standardising a tiered assessment.

 

Standardise an assessment without applying a Smartgrade

Using the school or MAT Smartgrade is optional, except for when standardising tiered papers. To standardise without applying a Smartgrade, the SMARTGRADE CATEGORIES button should be greyed out by clicking Disable towards the right-hand side of the button. Percentile ranks and standardised scores can then be calculated without creating a Smartgrade by clicking CONFIRM towards the bottom of the screen. 

The School or MAT Smartgrade can be activated again by clicking Enable towards the right of the SMARTGRADE CATEGORIES button. Details on calculating the Smartgrade can be found below.

 

Standardise an assessment with a school or MAT Smartgrade

If the SMARTGRADE CATEGORIES button is greyed out, click Enable to the right-hand side. Once enabled, click the SMARTGRADE CATEGORIES button to open a modal which allows you to adjust the categories and grade boundaries used to set your Smartgrade for the assessment. (NB if you're using a "Global" assessment, you will only be able to edit the "SCHOOL" or "MAT" view.)

The standardisation modal looks like this:

 

In the Standardisation modal, you can:

  1. Rename your Smartgrade by giving it an alias.
  2. Adjust the number of Smartgrade categories you wish to use via the selection box above the table.
  3. Adjust the grade boundaries using the Boundary Raw Score column.
  4. Rename the Smartgrade categories using the Smartgrade Name column.

 

Adding Additional Smartgrades

You can also configure up to 2 additional Smartgrades, by clicking in the drop-down box shown below, and selecting 'Add new Smartgrade':

The additional Smartgrades can then be configured in the same way as above.

If you have created additional Smartgrades, but you no longer wish to see them, then once you have selected the Smartgrade in question from the drop-down, click 'Disable' next to the SMARTGRADE CATEGORIES button, and then you can either confirm the DISABLE, or select 'Delete' if you wish:

Notes:

  1. If you create an alias for your Smartgrade, the alias will show in the analysis module. However, the underlying Smartgrade name will still be used in Bulk Export and will be one of the following: SMARTGRADE, SMARTGRADE 2, SMARTGRADE 3, GLOBAL SMARTGRADE, GLOBAL SMARTGRADE 2, GLOBAL SMARTGRADE 3.
  2. The Smartgrade Category Name can be up to 5 characters long.
  3. There is an optional "0" category, which is helpful if you want to add a "U" style grade while keeping the category number and Smartgrade name in alignment. To activate the category, simply change the Boundary Raw Score from the default of "NA" to "0". 
  4. Your edits won't be saved until you select CONFIRM. You then need to select CONFIRM again from the main Marking standardisation page to generate your calculated grades.

 

For details on standardising tiered assessments, please see this help article.

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