Assessment

Marks a teacher can enter, and an average that is never stale.

Each average, each weighting and each “who has not been marked yet” is worked out at the moment it is read. Nothing is cached, so nothing quietly disagrees with the marks underneath it.

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At a glance

Kestrel’s assessment module is a markbook, report templates and the NESA and VASS board submissions, all worked from the same marks.

A markbook that derives

Averages worked out on each read, overrides keeping their reason, formative kept apart from summative.

Dispensations applied

An approved illness, misadventure or appeal claim changes each average it touches.

Release set on the task

Each task names when its marks reach the student and the family.

Reports and board submissions

Report templates and the NESA and VASS submissions, all from the same marks.

A Year 10 English markbook: six tasks with their weights and the highest and lowest result, then each student’s marks, exemptions and absences, and an average worked out from them. — Tasks, marks and the average, in one markbook. Invented data

Questions schools ask

How does Kestrel handle illness and misadventure?

An approved illness, misadventure or appeal claim writes the dispensation the school granted, and each average is then taken under it.

When do families see marks?

Each task names when its marks reach the student and the family, so release is set on the task itself.

Which board submissions does Kestrel produce?

The NESA submission, and the Victorian VASS submission from the same generator.

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The markbook.

A teacher sets tasks for a class: each with a code unique in that class, a due date, a weight, a scale, and a mark of formative or summative. A whole column of marks is typed and saved in one action.

Derived on each readThe converted mark, the weighted average, and who is still missing a mark. None of it is stored, so none of it can be out of step with the marks it came from.

Overrides keep their reasonAn override is kept on the result together with why it was made. A number a teacher changed and a number the formula produced are not the same fact, and the record says which is which.

Formative apart from summativeThe markbook narrows to one or the other from the address, so the view a head of department wants is a link they can send.

Marks owedA teacher sees the tasks with marks outstanding on their own home page and opens the marks straight from the line.

Illness, misadventure and appeal.

An approved illness, misadventure or appeal claim writes the dispensation the school granted, and each average is then taken under it.

The consequence matters more than the feature: a student who missed an assessment for a reason the school accepted does not get a zero on a report because somebody was away the week the paperwork came in.

When a mark reaches a family.

A task names when its marks reach the student and the family. Release is set on the task itself, so no-one has to remember to run a bulk action. A mark cannot arrive in a portal at four on a Friday because a checkbox was set on the wrong screen.

On a student’s record, the Assessment section reads their tasks for the period, with each class’s formative tasks kept apart from its summative and an average over each group. Beneath that is their own average for each reporting period of the last two years, overall or by subject or by class.

Where an overall average has fallen by more than the figure the school sets, the record shows the drop. The school chooses the figure; Kestrel does not decide what counts as a drop worth noticing.

Trends, and the students behind them.

Trends, and the students below the school’s threshold, are published for the dashboards and for the overnight read, and stored nowhere. The night reads the marks as they are, so a cohort chart and the markbook it came from cannot drift apart between one term and the next.

How the overnight read works

Reports, and results from outside.

Report templatesHeld with the reporting periods and the scales a mark may be expressed in. A template is frozen once it publishes, so a report reissued in two years is the report that was sent, not the template as it is today.

Curriculum outcomesImported from the authority’s own file.

External resultsThe office loads a results file and each line that matches a student lands on their transcript. The office checks each line beside the student it names, the load reports any line that names no-one, and a corrected file loaded again replaces the earlier result.

Standard reportsResults by class and task, as at a day you name, downloadable as CSV.

The board submission, from the same marks.

The NESA submission writes one record per student per course: board number, year of schooling, course code and unit, and the school assessment mark the markbook derives. The Victorian VASS submission is the same generator run against the same mappings, one record per student per study and unit, with the student’s VSN.

It refuses. A class that sets a task counting toward the board but is mapped to no course is named by its code. A student with no board number stops the file. So does a board-reportable task no-one has marked.

So each student in a submission is accounted for before it leaves.

Built to be used on the day.

The markbooks open on this year’s classes. The class list fits a phone without scrolling sideways, because a roll call and a mark both happen standing up. A person holding no assessment capability is told plainly what was refused.

The accessibility statement

Bring a reporting cycle that went wrong.

Start with the eight-minute film. Then, if you’d like, forty minutes with us on your scales and your board deadline.

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