Head of School Comments

The head of school signs every report card in the school, and on a card with three hundred pupils behind it that line is the one most likely to be left blank. Head of school comments let you write the remark once per band of results, and every card whose overall average falls in that band is offered it.

Set them up at Report Cards → Scales → Head of school comments.

How a band works

Each band is a starting percentage and a sentence. A pupil is given the sentence for the highest band they reach, so you never state an upper bound:

A pupil averaging 68% gets the 60% sentence. One averaging 91% gets the 75% one.

Take the lowest band down to 0%, or a pupil below your lowest floor is offered nothing at all, which is the one case a default is most worth having.

It is a suggestion, never an entry

The default appears on the report card editor as placeholder text in the head of school's box, with the box itself left empty. That distinction is the whole design:

• Leave the box alone and the card prints the band's sentence, resolved fresh each time. Rewrite the band later and every card that had not been written on prints the new wording.
• Type in the box and what you typed replaces it, permanently, for that pupil. A remark written by hand is never overwritten by a scale.

One card gets no suggestion at all: a card with a subject still waiting for its exam. The bands are read against the overall average, and while part of the term is unmarked that average is not the pupil's result yet, so a sentence chosen from it would praise or warn about a figure that is going to move. The box is simply empty, and you can still write in it by hand. Once every subject is complete the band's sentence appears as usual.

Because the default is never saved into the pupil's record, saving a card after changing something else entirely (an attendance figure, a trait rating) cannot silently turn the school's standard sentence into an authored remark for that child.

What it does not touch

These bands are separate from your grading scale, deliberately. The grading scale letters an individual subject mark; these comment on a pupil's whole term. Tying them together would mean a school could not have five grade letters and three comment bands, which most schools want.

They also apply only to the head of school's remark. A class teacher's remark, and any extra remark line your school has added, stay blank until somebody writes them. Those are meant to be about the individual child, and a banded default would be worse than an empty line.

If you set none

Nothing happens, and that is a supported answer. A school that authors no bands gets no default and its head of school writes each remark freely, exactly as before. There is no platform-wide default wording, because putting words in a head teacher's mouth is not ours to do.

On the phone

The bands themselves are set up on the web, under Report Cards → Scales → Head of school comments; the mobile app has no screen for writing them.

They are honoured on the phone, though. Open More → Report Cards, choose a pupil and tap Record. The head of school's box shows the band's sentence as placeholder text and leaves the box itself empty, with a line underneath saying that your school's default comment prints as it stands. Type in the box and what you typed replaces it for that pupil, exactly as on the web. The box is offered only to somebody allowed to write the head of school's remark.