Online report cards: how to create and publish them

At the end of every term, it is the same race: collecting grades from every teacher, working out averages, checking rankings, printing, signing, handing out… and then answering parents who have lost the document. Online report cards put an end to this marathon. Here is how they work, what they should contain and how to set them up in your school.

What is an online report card?

An online report card is a report card produced and shared by school management software. Teachers enter their grades once; the software calculates subject averages, the overall average and each student’s ranking, then generates a report card ready to print or to view on a phone.

For the school, that means fewer calculation errors and days of work saved. For families, it means a report card available as soon as it is published, and one they can no longer lose.

What a good report card should contain

• The school’s official header: name, logo, academic year and period (term or semester).
• Grades for each subject with their weightings, the student’s average and often the class average.
• The overall average and ranking, calculated automatically.
• Absences, especially unexcused hours.
• Teachers’ comments and the class council’s remarks.
• Signatures of the head of school, with place and date.

4 steps to switch to online report cards

1. Set up subjects and weightings

Start by declaring your subjects, by level or by class, with their weightings and grading scale (out of 10, out of 20…). These settings then drive every calculation.

2. Let teachers enter their grades

Each teacher enters the grades for their assessments from their own account. Grades above the maximum are rejected, which prevents typing mistakes that would distort an average.

3. Check the summary table

Before publishing, the school leadership reviews a class summary table: averages, rankings, students not assessed. This is the time to fix an oversight, not after the report cards have gone out.

4. Publish to families

Once approved, the report card is published: parents and students view it in their own space and can download it as a PDF.

Protecting report cards against forgery

A paper report card is easy to photocopy and alter. That is a real problem when students move to another school or apply for a scholarship. On Zaame, every report card carries an authenticity QR code: by scanning it, anyone can check on a secure page that the report card was really issued by the school and has not been changed.

What Zaame does for your report cards

• Automatic calculation of averages, rankings and class averages.
• Weightings adjustable by level, and “not assessed” or “not submitted” marks when a grade is missing.
• An automatically suggested remark based on results, which the form teacher can edit.
• Unexcused absence hours carried over automatically.
• Official layout in portrait or landscape, adjustable signatories, authenticity QR code.
• Publication to families in their own space, and a yearly transcript at the end of the year.

Discover all of Zaame’s features.

How much does it cost?

Zaame’s Basic plan is free for up to 39 students per academic year: enough to try online report cards with one or two classes. Paid plans take over for larger schools; they are listed on the Pricing page.

In short

Online report cards save the whole team time, reduce errors and reassure families. With school management software like Zaame, you go from entering grades to publishing report cards in a few clicks, with documents that cannot be forged.

Ready to try? Create your free account and publish your first online report cards.