Troubleshooting exam results

Work out why a mark, grade, merit position, or report card looks wrong, what you can fix yourself, and when to raise it with support.

Most exam problems come from one of three places: the marks, the exam setup, or the timing of the background calculation. This page walks the symptoms a school sees most, in the order worth checking.

Prerequisites

Anyone working an exam can use this page. Fixing what you find may need the exam coordinator, because most causes sit in the exam setup rather than in the marks.

Three things that explain most problems

Results are calculated in the background. Saving marks starts the calculation. It runs in steps and takes a moment. A report checked immediately after a save can be a few seconds behind. Reload the report before you conclude anything is wrong.

The setup decides what the marks mean. Full marks, pass marks, weights, and the grade scale all come from the exam setup. A mark that looks fine can produce a grade that looks wrong because of a setting, not because of the mark.

There are two grading systems. Senior classes are graded on numbers and get a GPA. Junior classes are graded on performance levels and never get one. Before chasing a grading problem, check which system the class uses. A fix in one has no effect on the other.

Marks are blank or wrong

A subject column is blank on the tabulation sheet or report card

Check these in order:

Was the mark actually saved? Open Marks Entry, load the same class, subject, and exam type, and look. Typing a mark and leaving the page without clicking Save Changes loses it.
Is the subject on the class exam? Open the exam's Config and check step 2. A subject that isn't included, or is included but not ticked under Show In, won't appear on that document.
Are you looking at the right part of the subject? A subject marked in several parts, such as written plus assessment, has a column per part. A blank in one part means that part wasn't entered, even if another part was.
Is the student marked absent? An absence is saved as a zero for that part, and a zero below the part's pass mark fails the whole subject.

If the mark is saved, the subject is on the exam, and the column is still blank, raise it with support.

The total is lower than the marks add up to

Usually one of these:

A part of the subject is missing marks. The total counts every part. One unentered part drags the total down without leaving an obvious gap.
The weights don't do what you expect. A part contributes its share of its weight, not its raw mark: the mark, divided by the full marks, times the weight. A 100-mark paper weighted at 70 contributes 70 for full marks and 42 for a score of 60. Check the weights in step 1 and step 2 of the class exam setup.
The student was absent for one part of the subject. An absence is saved as a zero for that part, not skipped, so it pulls the weighted total down. If that part has a pass mark, the zero also fails the whole subject.

If the weights are right and the total still looks understated, raise it with support and say which student, subject, and exam.

A mark or grade is off by a fraction

It isn't. Marks are always rounded down before the grade band is looked up, so 40.71 is treated as 40. If a grade looks one band too high or too low, compare the mark against the grade scale's band boundaries.

Students or subjects are missing

A student is missing from marks entry or the tabulation sheet

Check their enrolment. They need to be enrolled in that class, section, and session. This is the cause most of the time.
Check their subject list. A student only appears for subjects they take. An optional subject they didn't choose won't show.
Check they haven't left. Students transferred out are deliberately excluded so their old marks don't create phantom rows.

Fix the student record first, then reload marks entry. There's nothing to fix on the exam side.

The class shows no subjects at all in marks entry

The class exam setup is incomplete or still a draft. Open Exam Management, click Config on the exam, and look at the class's Status. Not created yet means it was never set up. Draft means it was saved but never finished. Reopen it and finish with Save & Continue so it reads Active.

A previous term's exam is missing from a filter

Change the Session selector explicitly rather than expecting the page to work it out. Closed and finished exams still appear in reports, so an exam missing from a report filter usually means the wrong session or term is selected.

Grades, fails, and merit positions

A student failed even though their total looks like a pass

The total isn't what decides it. Check, in this order:

Pass marks on each part. Falling below the pass mark on any part fails the whole subject, whatever the total.
Paired subjects. Paired subjects pass or fail together against a combined pass mark, and the pair result overrides the individual subject result. Check step 3 of the class exam setup to see whether the subject is in a pair group, and whether it should be.
Which subjects are main subjects. Failing only optional subjects does not fail a student overall. If someone is failed overall and only optional subjects went wrong, raise it with support.

A grade shows a dash, or a GPA of zero

These two have different causes, and only one of them is about the grade scale.

A GPA of zero, with the fail grade beside it, means the subject was failed. That is the ordinary way a failed subject prints. Check the pass marks on each part, whether the student was absent for one, and whether the subject sits in a pair group. Don't go to the grade scale for this one.

A dash means the mark fell outside every band in the scale and your school has no fail grade set. That one is a grade-scale problem. Send your FEMS administrator the exam, the mark, and what you saw.

A merit position shows a dash

That's the intended display for a student who failed or has no grade. They aren't ranked. Check their result before treating the dash as the problem.

Expected. Students with the same result and the same total share a position. Roll number decides only which of them prints first, not who ranks higher.

Results don't appear after saving marks

Wait and reload the report. The calculation runs after the save.
Check the marks really saved. Reload marks entry and look at the grid. It reloads from the server after a save, so what it shows is what was stored.
Check a student's own view separately. What a student sees when they sign in can lag a few minutes behind the office view.

If a whole class has marks in marks entry but no results anywhere after several minutes, stop and raise it with support. That pattern means the calculation didn't finish, and repeating the save won't fix it.

Report cards and PDFs

Nothing opens when I click Search or Print

Your browser blocked the new tab. Allow pop-ups for the site and search again. This affects most of the printable documents, since they open in a new tab.

The report card opens but is empty

Three causes, in order of likelihood: the marks aren't processed yet, the student has outstanding fees on the installment named in Report card can be printed after, or you're printing outside the window that setting allows. Check the tabulation sheet first: if it has data and the report card doesn't, the cause is the setting rather than the marks.

When fees are the cause, the message names the amount owed. In a class print run the student is skipped rather than refused loudly, so a card missing from a set is worth checking against the accounts.

Printing a transcript says the written exam type isn't set up

The message tells you what to do. The exam is missing its written component for that class. Open the exam's Config, open the class, and add the written exam component in step 1. Then print again.

A report card is missing a photo or a signature

The document still prints, just without that image. It usually clears itself on the next print. If images stay missing across several attempts, raise it with support.

A junior report card never finishes loading

Try once more. If it still hangs instead of printing, raise it with support and name the student and the exam.

Columns on the transcript don't line up with the marks under them

Nothing on your side causes this. Raise it with support with the exam, class, and a copy of the printed document.

What to send when you raise it with support

Raise it as a support ticket from Help Desk > Support Tickets. See Getting help when you're stuck for the full path.

Include all of this. A complete report is faster to fix than a quick one.

The class, section, session, term, and exam name.
The student's ID, if it's about one student.
The subject and which part of it, such as written or assessment.
What you expected to see and what you saw instead.
Where you saw it, naming the screen or the printed document.
Whether it affects one student, one subject, or the whole class. This one matters most, because it points straight at the likely cause.

FAQ

Can I re-run the calculation myself? Not from these screens. Saving a mark again restarts it for that class and subject, which is the closest thing to a re-run available to you.

Is it safe to re-save marks that are already correct? Yes. Saving the same values again is harmless, and it restarts the calculation for that class and subject.

Why did a result change after I fixed the exam setup? Results are worked out from marks and setup together. Changing full marks, weights, pass marks, or the grade scale changes what every affected report shows. Check the tabulation sheet after any setup change mid-exam.

A whole class looks wrong. Where do I start? Start with the exam setup, not the marks. One class going wrong together almost always points at a setting shared by the class, such as the weights, the pass marks, or the grade scale.

One student looks wrong. Where do I start? Start with that student: their enrolment, their subject list, their attendance for each part, and their marks. A single student's problem is rarely a setup problem.

Troubleshooting exam results

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