Uploading exam results to GO 4 Schools provides schools with immediate access to headline figures and a complete analysis of exam results, including breakdowns by focus groups. Below are a few hints and tips that may help schools to get the most from the system and make the process as easy as possible.
Preparation for exam results day
- Check that students are attached to the correct subjects – GO 4 Schools will treat a student in a subject as if they are entered into that exam which will affect statistics. To add or remove students from a subject you can use feed rules during term time or the locked subject management tool if subjects are locked or during the summer holidays when feeds will often not be processing due to a lack of subject data.
- Consider locking subjects - by default, subjects will disappear from GO 4 Schools when they are removed from the timetable, and students will disappear from groups if they are no longer timetabled for a subject. The facility to lock subjects in GO 4 Schools can be used to circumvent this. When locked, the students, teachers and groups belonging to the locked subjects in GO 4 Schools do not change even if they change/disappear from the timetable.
To assist schools, all subjects in all years are locked in late May. School managers are able to lock and unlock subjects via the feed rules page, and add/remove/move students from groups in locked subjects using the locked subject management tool. Locking subjects only freezes the membership of groups within a subject; markbooks and reports continue to operate as before.
Please see the articles Locking subjects and Managing locked subjects, for more information on both uses.
- Check that you have the correct QANs attached to markbooks so that grades will be counted correctly in the analysis and for the performance tables. School managers can view the qualifications by selecting Curriculum > Subjects and Qualifications. Things to check include:
- Check that you have the correct qualification assigned to the correct subject.
- Y10 – Y13 check there are no discount codes missing for qualifications that contribute to performance tables. If there are missing discount codes, this can be easily rectified by editing the markbook and then changing the qualification. Choose qualification (DO NOT reset your markbook) searching for the relevant qualification. There are a few subjects such as art & design where the same QAN is used for several qualifications (e.g. fine art, photography, graphics) but the discount code will vary. Special QAN codes for these subjects can be found here.
- Y12 & Y13 – check that you have the correct qualification. A common error is to have an AS qualification for students studying an A2 qualification.
- Y10 ensure you have included both English language and English literature. If literature is not being taught until Y11, you may wish to copy the grades from English language into a markbook for literature in order that your headline performance figures double weight the best grade for English.
- Check that the full science pathway is present for all students. i.e. if students are doing single sciences there needs to be a markbook for each qualification, i.e. biology, chemistry and physics. We advise using whole grades for the double science GCSE as there are 17 grades for this qualification. Using fine grades would create 51 grades which is too many to set sensible grade boundaries.
- If you are using a school-scheme for KS3 English and maths, using the English and maths version of the scheme ensures that headline measures appear on your year group statistics.
- Create a markbook for any non-timetabled subjects for which you want subject analysis to be available. A separate markbook can be created using a feed rule to add one or more students to a group in a new or existing subject.
- BTECs – Ensure that there is a separate markbook for each version of the qualification that students will be awarded. For example, if some students will be awarded a First Certificate and some a First Award, these will need to be set up as a separate markbooks if you want to upload the results by subject name. A separate markbook can be created using a feed rule to move one or more students from one group to another in a new or existing subject. If you don’t set up a separate markbook, you will need to upload the results for the alternative qualification using the QAN, which will ensure the results are included in the overall statistics, but you will not be able to see the subject/group analysis for this subject.
- Ensure you have uploaded results for any early entries taken in a previous exam season.
- Check that you have uploaded KS2 data for your Y11 students, including any who may have joined since the start of Year 7. Please refer to the Guidance on uploading KS2 levels.
- By default, students will be included in the key statistics if they have an enrolment status of Single Registration or Main - Dual Registration. Students will not be included if they have an enrolment status of Subsidiary - Dual Registration or Guest. If you want to override this functionality and force the inclusion or removal of a particular student from the key statistics, school managers can do this using the system student attribute Student statistics rule. For example, if a student joined the school after January census and you want to include them in the stats, or you want to exclude a student who arrived from overseas since the start of Y10 from a country where English is not an official language.
- People > Student attributes > Student attributes > Student Statistics rule. Click Manage values and if there is not already a set of values for the current academic year, add a new set of values for the current academic year. For the relevant student, select Included in stats or Excluded from stats from the drop down to override the default functionality.
- Create 2-3 spare student attributes that can be used for analysis of key groups post results and academic year roll over, as it is not possible to create new attributes in previous academic years.
- Consider if you want to lock projected grades. Some schools choose to lock projected grades to be able to track the accuracy of Teacher predictions.
- Curriculum > Grade & residual settings > Change Projected grade/level to be editable by no one.
- You may like to warn staff, parents and students that they will not be able to access GO 4 Schools on the results embargo day(s).
Results Embargo Day
- As with your MIS, you will need to place an embargo on access to exam results on GO 4 Schools so that only the staff classified as school managers will be able to see results and analysis, until you remove the embargo.
- Manage > School contact details & settings > Settings
- Select checkbox for Block access for all students, parents and staff except for school managers.
- If you do not want students and parents to be able to view results as soon as the embargo is lifted, use People > Parent/Student Access to turn off visibility and reselect when you are ready to enable access again.
- Extract results from your MIS – as a .csv file.
- You may need to add in qualifications that have not been uploaded into your MIS, e.g. BTECs.
- Check that the grades match the grade types expected in GO 4 Schools for non-GCSE qualifications e.g. Cambridge Nationals L2P.
- You may need to add in DOB and gender of students or UPN.
- You may need to change subject headings to match the name of the subject in GO 4 Schools.
- If students have taken exams for which there is not a matching markbook in GO 4 Schools, results can be uploaded using the QAN instead of the subject name.
- Check that you have your .csv file in the correct format. See Grade File Formats and then use the Grade File Conversion process to convert the file ready for uploading.
Uploading Actual Grades
Exam results should be uploaded into the Actual grade type. More information about the upload process can be found in the School Manager's Guide, or on the actual grade upload page Curriculum > Grades > Actual.
- Where you have suitable qualifications attached to subjects in GO 4 Schools, you can upload using the GO 4 Schools subject name.
- If a student has taken an exam and they are not a member of a subject with the correct qualification attached in GO 4 Schools, you can upload the exam result using the QAN code in place of a GO 4 Schools subject name. You will not have access to subject statistics where you upload using QAN codes that are not attached to a subject in GO 4 Schools, but the exam results WILL count in all of the year group statistics.
- Please note where you are uploading results using a QAN code for a qualification which can have a different discount code depending on which syllabus was studied, you will need to use the qualification code generated by GO 4 Schools. Please see the qualifications with syllabuses page. If you do not upload using the correct syllabus, the qualification will not count in your statistics.
Analysis is complete as soon as the grades have all uploaded successfully. The results will be seen on the year group and subject pages as well as in the other analysis tools such as the explorers, ribbons, flight path charts, etc. The grades will also be visible in markbooks and on the student and parent pages depending on the settings for actual grade type (Curriculum > Grade & residual settings).
- You may wish to consider changing Tracking & Progress preferences to track on actual grade. Ribbons and At a glance charts will then display actual grades by default. You will still be able to choose to display multiple sets of ribbons by selecting choose ribbons on each page where ribbons appear.
- Alternatively, you can use the Exams focus button on subject pages, which then displays the Actual grade as the preferred tacking grade.
- The grade settings (Curriculum > Grade & residual settings) allow schools to choose how Actual grades are included in target and projected grades. These settings determine the default for the school and can only be changed by school managers. However, individual users can override these default settings on a page by page basis using the Change... tool shown below, which appears at the top of the year group statistics.
- Where the influence of actual grades is included, GO 4 Schools will compare any actual grades with the grade type, and choose the higher value. For example, if a target grade has been set at C, but the student has an actual grade of B, GO 4 Schools will use the higher of the two values in the statistics (as the student will never get less than a B). If you wish to exclude actual grades from the statistics, you can use the tool above.
Results Day
- Remove the embargo on access to exam results enabling all staff to see results and analysis
- Manage > School contact details & settings > Settings
- Unselect checkbox for Block access for all students, parents and staff except for school managers.
- If you turned off visibility to parents and students using People > Parent/Student Access remember to re-enable this when you are ready for parents and students to view results.