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title: Grade and residual settings
description: Grade and residual settings | Help & Support — GO 4 Schools
---
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# Grade and residual settings
You can change the names and descriptions for all grade types using the **Grade and residual settings** page, which is accessible from the **Curriculum** menu:
You also use the page to control:
- Who can see each type of grade.
- Who can change the grades held. These can be changed mid-year, for example some schools will leave the projected grades editable for a few weeks before locking them, enabling schools to track the accuracy of teachers' projections.
- Your preferred target and progress grades. These will affect the ribbons and colour coding of grades on the student page and markbooks.
- Management of progress calculations.
- Inclusion of actual grades for each grade type.
**Tracking and progress preferences**
The options chosen in this section will affect how progress and residuals are monitored and displayed throughout GO 4 Schools. These settings tie in with residual schemes.
The first row in the table above allows you to specify a default pair of grades to compare. These will be used for all year groups unless you specify different rules for specific year groups, which you can do by clicking the "Add a specific rule for a year group" button.
The "Preferred scale" option allows you to choose whether the residual is calculated in terms of:
- **Simple Index**
This is just the distance between two grades - if using whole grades, this will be a value of 1 for each grade (target 5, current 6). When using fine grades, the values are split in thirds, so a target of 5+ while a student is currently at a 6 would be +0.33
- **APS**
The difference in APS points – less widely used now that new GCSEs and KS2 SATs do not have APS points but still useful if you have assigned equivalent APS points to a school-defined Internal Grading Scheme for tracking 'Life after levels' in KS3.
- **School score**
Where you have applied a unique scoring system to an internal grading scheme this scale can be applied to determine the residual. Useful for schools using internal grading schemes that align with scaled scores.
- **Numeric GCSE points**
This takes into account the fine detail of the value of the current grade. If using this setting it is recommended that you also display the value of the current grade, as opposed to just the grade. Can be used with GCSEs with grades of 1-9 and for school-defined internal grading schemes which have been given Numeric GCSE equivalent point scores. (These are often used for tracking in KS3 instead of NC levels.)
- **New APS points (Post-16 year groups only)**
The difference in APS points as above, but for post-16 year groups
The **Residual output** allows you to control the visibility of residual data for staff/students/parents:
- **Value**
The simple result of the calculation performed for the residual. This could be a whole number or a decimal, depending on the option you have chosen for the **Preferred scale**.
- **Band**
A named range that you have set up in a school residual scheme e.g. residuals in the range of -1 to 0 might be displayed as "Below target", whereas residuals in the range -2 and lower might be displayed as "Concern".
- **Colour**
The colour to display according to the band in which the residual falls.
**Grade settings**
The first row in each table allows you to specify how the grade will be displayed/used in GO 4 Schools by default for all year groups. You can add other rows by clicking the **Add a specific rule for a year group** button to tailor the settings for a specific year group, e.g. you may want to use one name for the grade in Years 7-9 and use a different name for it in Years 10 and 11, or you may want to use a grade for certain year group only by tailoring the visibility.
For each grade you can specify a range of options:
- **Enabled**
Whether the specified grade should be used or not. This helps you to set up and try different options before finalising the settings for the year.
- **Name**
The name to use for the grade, e.g. "Working at grade".
- **Short Name**
A short version of the name to use in GO 4 Schools where space is limited, e.g. 'WAG'. If the short name is specified it is used in preference to the name of the grade.
- **Description**
An explanation for staff, students and parents about the grade. This can appear as a tooltip in markbooks or in the report key for progress reports. This also displays to trust managers for the Trust site.
- **Visible to**
Which groups of users can see the grade, as well as how to display the grade e.g. you may want to hide certain grades from students and parents. There are three options for visibility:
- Grade - Shows the grade/alias awarded
- Value - Shows the value of the grade awarded
- Percentage - The percentage value of the grade (useful mainly with Current grades)
- **Editable by**
Which staff roles can change the grades via markbooks.
- **Hide from markbook if empty**
Whether the grade should be omitted from the left hand side of the markbook if there are no grades to display; this can save space. You will need to show the grade (whether empty or not) if you want staff to fill in grade, e.g. for the projected.
- **Include Actual grades in statistics for**
Whether students' exam results should override grades in this column where present when statistics are being calculated. This is useful where students have completed exams in year 10 and no longer have targets/progress grades for a subject. It will select the higher of two grades if there are two present, so if a student achieved a D on an exam, but are currently targeted/predicted a C, the C will be used for statistics.
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