Overview

Progress Reports allow staff to enter data using a simple drop-down selection for all Areas of Assessment against which the students are to be marked against. Each Area of Assessment (AoA) can be configured with a different grading scheme, but unlike the Semester Reports module where different subjects can be configured to include different report elements, all subjects included in the Progress Report cycle will report on the same Areas of Assessment.

Compass' Progress Reports module can be used to give students both a text-based result (e.g. "Very Good", "Above the Standard", "High Distinction", etc...) as well as a numerical score, which can be used to calculate a Grade Point Average (GPA).  For example if the school uses a 100 point system and the student consistently gets the highest mark possible they would get a GPA of 100. Your school can set what you want your scores to be out of (e.g. 100, 10, 4.0, etc...).  Compass gives you the flexibility to use these functions together or just use one without the other. So you can have a Well Above the Standard score give a student 100 in their GPA, or you can not calculate the GPA, whatever your school prefers.

See below for an example report using a 100 point system where the text-based results have numerical scores attributed to them to allow for calculating a Grade Point Average. This allows parents and students to easily see both the subjects the student is struggling with, as well as the Areas of Assessment that the student has the most trouble with.

Progress Reports Grid:

Progress reports that have numerical values attributed to them can also produce graphs that illustrate the students growth from cycle to cycle. Compass is able to produce two different types of graphs - Per-Class, Per-AoA Graphs, and Overall Grade Point Average by Cycle.  See below for examples of these two different graphing styles.

Per-Class, Per-AoA Graph:

Note that each class the student is in has it's own graph. Each line or column on the graph represents a different Area of Assessment - you can see the legend at the bottom of the image.

Overall Grade Point Average by Cycle:

This graph shows the students Overall Grade Point Average from cycle to cycle. The image below is from a system where the GPA is calculated out of 4.0, whereas the two images above the system was set out of 100.

How to set up your progress reports to facilitate each of these variations will be explained in the following sections. 

Administration

Note: Depending on the settings on this tab for your school you may not see the 'Static Graph Markers' section that is shown in the image below at first, how to turn this on is explained below.

Static Graph Markers

General GPA Settings

• Fill Down Function - Tick the 'Fill Down Function' box if you want your staff to have the option to use Fill Down in order to fill out their reports. This would enable them to (for example) select a score for the student at the top of the list and then fill down this score to the other students in the class, allowing staff to fill out their reports quickly. 
• Pre-fill Function - Ticking this option will allow staff to select a previous cycle from a drop-down menu and fill the current cycle with the scores the students received in the selected previous cycle for the included AoAs. For this function to work you need to have previously run a cycle and use the same AoAs in the new cycle. Staff will still be able to select a different result for the student, but if they choose they can leave it at the pre-filled, previously achieved score.

• Hide report grid if all NA - If a student receives a result of NA for every AoA in the cycle then the subject will be hidden from displaying on the grid. For this to work you need to have an NA option for each AoA.
• Hide report grid if all zero - If a student receives a score of 0 for every AoA in the cycle then the subject will be hidden from displaying on the grid. For this to work you need to have AoAs that contribute to the GPA, and thus have values attributed to them. This is covered more fully below.
• Show AoA Score Averages - If you have AoAs with numerical values attributes to them, ticking this box will display the average of these scores to parents and students when they view the reports. In the image above this is the column on the far right (labelled Subject Avg.) and the bottom row (labelled Performance Avg.). This will also display a graph of overall GPA scores per cycle underneath the grid on a student's profile page.
• Show AoA Values - If you have AoAs with numerical values attributed to them, ticking this box will display this value next to the AoA on the Areas of Assessment tab and on the Progress Reports Results Grid.  These numerical values only display for staff.
• Show Results Grid on PDF - This controls whether or not the grid appears on the PDF of the progress report. The grid will always appear on the Reports tab on the student's profile online, but by unticking this you can opt to not display it on the PDF. Please note that if you have this button unticked as well as the Per-Class, Per-AoA Graphs box unticked, then you will not be able to export out a PDF as there would be nothing to display.

• Per-Class, Per-AoA Graphs - Ticking this box turns on the Per-Class, Per-AoA Graphs, which you can see in the image below. They display in a graph the student's score for each Area of Assessment within each class. You can control which AoAs display on the graph, as well as how they display (line or column), and the colour they appear as. 
• 

Creating Areas of Assessment

The Areas of Assessment tab is where the specific reporting elements for Progress Reports are created and managed.

Compass makes it easy to run the same cycle over and over, but if you plan to use the Per-Class, Per-AoA graphs in your reports it's imperative that you decide on your Areas of Assessment (what the students are being graded on) at the start, and stick with them for the duration of the year, or at the very least the semester. Keep in mind you will not be able to make changes to the AoAs once they are in use. 

Before creating the first Progress Reports cycle for your school, you will need to determine and configure the Areas of Assessment on which you wish to report.

Navigate to the Dashboard tab of the Progress Reports module. This will display the Progress Reports dashboard, which details all of the currently open and previously published progress reports cycles for your school. If this is the first time you have used the module both tables will be empty.

     

Select the 'Areas of Assessment' tab, where all currently available Areas of Assessment are displayed. To create a new Area of Assessment, click the '+ Add Area of Assessment' button.

     

This will open a popup box like in the image below. You must give the Area of Assessment a name in the topmost box. You are also given the option to copy the grading scheme options from previously created Areas of Assessment using the drop-down below. If this is the first AoA you are creating, the drop-down list won't have any options available from which to copy. Once you have completed this information, click the 'Add' button to save the AoA.

If you have chosen to copy options from a previously created AoA, you can still edit these once the new AoA is created.

Examples of Areas of Assessment may include:

• Classroom Behaviour
• Time Management
• Works Cooperatively
• Preparation for Class
• Effort

After adding the new AoA, you will need to create the options from which staff will select to grade the students. Click the box to allow editing, then begin typing in the box and press 'Enter' on your keyboard when you have completed typing the first option:

     

Each Area of Assessment must be assigned possible results options. A minimum of one result must be assigned to an Area of Assessment, however there is no limit to the number of results that can be added to an AoA. Compass recommends between four and six options per AoA.

Examples of grading schema options for the Areas of Assessment include:

• Well above the standard, Above the standard, At the standard, Below the standard, Well below the standard, N/A
• Excellent, Very Good, Good, Satisfactory, Needs Attention, N/A
• Always, Often, Sometimes, Rarely, Never, N/A

Once you have entered all of the possible results options ensure that they are in the correct order; the highest/best result should be at the top of the list and progress down to the lowest result at the bottom of the list. To rearrange results, click on the hamburger menu icon (three horizontal lines) next to the result, and drag the item up or down to the position you want.



If you wish to attribute numerical values to each result and have Compass calculate a GPA, use the slider option at the far right. Moving the slider down will turn the background of the result green to indicate it contributes to the GPA, while those that are red do not contribute and do not have a numerical score associated with them. In order to include a result that does not contribute to a student's GPA calculation (for example a "Not Applicable" option) while others do have numerical values, this option needs to be at the bottom of the list, and red. As you move the slider down and the results start to be highlighted green, you will see at the far right the value each result would receive. 

Keep in mind that the lowest option that contributes to calculating the GPA will always be valued at 0, while the highest will always be whatever number your portal is set to calculate out of. As a result you may need to add additional result options if you don't want your lowest option to receive a 0, or you want the options to receive whole number values. 

GPA Calculation
Progress Reports will be set to calculate your AoAs out of 4 by default. If you score your progress reports using a different scale or you would like more flexibility in your scale, for example the 100 point scale as in the image above, please contact the Compass Support Team to have this actioned. Keep in mind though that you can only set one GPA calculation value for your entire portal - so you can't have some items calculated out of 100 and others calculated out of 10; they are all calculated on the same scale and changing this value for your portal will recalculate the scores for any previously run cycles as well.

You can delete any result options by clicking the red X on the right-hand side of the line. To change the name of the results once entered, highlight the text to edit, type the new text and press "Enter" on your keyboard once you are finished making changes.

Once you are completely happy with the results options and the numerical values that are associated with them, click the 'Lock' button. This will save the result options and lock results into place so that they cannot be rearranged or their values edited. Once an AoA is locked it will then be available to be added to a progress reports cycle.

Warning: Be sure to only click Lock once you are completely done setting up the AoA. Once an item is Locked it cannot be unlocked - so you will be unable to edit the order of the result options, or whether or not they contribute to the GPA. The only thing you will be able to do is edit the title of the AoA and the names of the individual result options, in case you need to fix any typos that have been made. If you have made a mistake you should archive the AoA and create a new one correctly. Archiving is important, as this ensures that no one erroneously uses the incorrectly setup AoA. 

Only Areas of Assessment that have been locked can be used in Reporting Cycles. Until Area of Assessment are locked they remain in draft mode and cannot be included.

Order of Areas of Assessment

Please keep in mind that you can only reorder the Areas of Assessment on the main Areas of Assessment tab. Once you create a progress reports cycle your cycle will also have an Areas of Assessment tab, but you do not set the order on the tab within the cycle, you do it on the main tab, like in the image above.

Managing Areas of Assessment

Creating a Reporting Cycle

A Progress Reports cycle can only produce one report for every student enrolled in that cycle.  Each time you wish to generate a new report, a new reporting cycle needs to be created. Every new reporting cycle can use new or different Areas of Assessment.

Important: In order for the Overall Grade Point Average by Cycle chart to display on the Reports tab of a students profile, the school must have run at least two cycles with the "Include in Overall Cycle Average Graph" tick box ticked, as the system requires there to be two or more cycles to be compared. As mentioned previously if you plan to use the Per-Class, Per-AoA graphs you should use the same AoAs for every cycle. 

To create a new reporting cycle, select the 'Cycles' tab from the Dashboard and then click the 'Add Cycle' button in the top left hand corner of the table. You can then enter the basic details of the reporting cycle:

     

Title	Name of the report cycle. For example "Term One" or, for schools reporting more frequently, "T1, Wk4" etc. This is visible to staff, students and parents.
Start/Finish	These are the enrolment bounds of the cycle. Think of this as a snapshot in time of the student's enrolments that you want to be reported on for this cycle. This has no bearing on when staff can access the reports to begin entering results, this tells Compass to check the classes the students were enrolled in within this date range, and allow the teachers of these classes to report on the students.  When creating a new cycle, these dates will default to the current date.
Comment	This is only shown to staff. Typically used as a message from the reporting coordinator to the staff with details about the reporting cycle. For example, instructions outlining the date by which results need to have been entered. The comment box is not a required field and can be left blank. Will not be shown to parents or students at any point.
Areas to Assess	You can select multiple Areas of Assessment that have already been setup to be included in the cycle. This is to assist with quickly setting up your cycle, but you will be able to add these AoAs later if you prefer.
Show Graph on User Profile	If ticked, this checkbox indicates that the Per-Class, Per-AoA graphs for this cycle will also show on the student profile page as well as on the PDF once the reporting cycle is published.

These details can also be modified once the reporting cycle has been created.

Once you have entered all the information, click the 'Add Cycle' button, this will add the cycle to the list of available cycles on the Cycles tab of the module.

Clicking on the name of the newly created cycle will take you to the cycle dashboard.

     

The Cycle tab includes all of the basic details for the report. 

The Title, Enrolment Bounds and Comment section were all explained in the table above.

Display Student Photo - This tick box displays the student's photo at the top right corner of each page of the report PDF.

Show per-class, per-AoA graphs - These options controls whether the per-class, per-AoA graphs display for this cycle (one student profiles and/or on the report PDF and the web).

Include in Overall Cycle Average Graph - When this box is ticked the cycle will be included as a data point in the Overall Grade Point Average by Cycle graph.

Include Attendance Column - When this is ticked, you can include imported attendance data on the progress reports.  Once ticked, you can then click 'Import Cycle Attendance Data' and choose either the class percentage, school percentage or VCE percentage to be imported.  

     

Report Header & Report Footer - The report header and footer is optional and only displays on the PDF of the report, not when viewing the results through the web. Schools typically include a letter from the principal in the header, and use the footer to include the school values or to include a legend of the grading schemes used. 

Ensure that you click 'Save' at the bottom of the page if you change any of the details.

Areas of Assessment tab

Management of the Areas of Assessment should be undertaken through the primary Areas Of Assessment tab from the Progress Reports cycle module dashboard. Only minor changes can be made to the Areas of Assessment within the reporting cycle. Any changes made here only apply to this specific reporting cycle, and will not be edited in the full AoA list for the school.

     

You can manage which Areas of Assessment are included in the report on this page and can include up to 9 in total (please note if including imported attendance data in the cycle, this will be counted as 1 of the possible 9 Areas of Assessment you can have in the cycle).

AoAs can be deleted using the 'Delete' button on the right-hand side of the bar. To add additional AoAs, use the drop-down box at the top of the menu to select the one you want to add, then click the 'Add' button to the right of the drop-down list.

If you create additional AoAs in the Progress Reports module after you have created a cycle, they will not appear in the drop-down list until they have been locked.

Please keep in mind that deleting an AoA on this tab does not delete it from your portal, it is simply removed from being included as a reporting item on this progress reporting cycle. 

Enrolments tab

In order for students to have a report for the cycle, they must be enrolled in the cycle. Using the Enrolment tab, individual students can be added or removed from reporting cycles.

Student enrolled at the school after the report cycle has been created are not automatically included in the report cycle, they will need to be manually added where appropriate. You cannot enrol a student in the cycle twice, so if all students are to be included in the cycle you can simply click the middle 'Add' button to add all current students (including any newly enrolled ones) to the cycle.

You can add students by selecting the individual or group of students you wish to include in the cycle, then click the 'Add' button to the right of the row. You can repeat this multiple times (e.g. add all Year 8s and then all Year 9s) in order to add the students who should get a report from this cycle. You can also click the 'Advanced' button to access further filtering options, so you can add students by custom flag, by subject, and more.

     
You can delete a student from the enrolments list by clicking on the red cross on the right-hand side of the table.

     

If you delete a student from the Enrolments tab after the reports have been opened and staff have begun to enter data, any results recorded for this student will be deleted.

Subjects tab

The Compass Progress Reports module allows you to specify which subjects you would like to include in the report cycle from the Subjects tab.

The classes that staff members can enter results for are determined by the subjects included in the report cycle. Which students the teachers need to enter results for is determined by the enrolment bounds for the reporting cycle and the students enrolled in the reporting cycle.

By default, all subjects will be included in the reports cycle. You can tell which subjects are included and which are excluded based on the column headings - the excluded subjects are on the left, while the included subjects are on the right. Using the selection arrows you can remove or add subjects to the reporting period. To move a subject, click on it so that it is highlighted and click on the arrow to move the subject across to the opposite list.

     

All subjects under the 'Excluded Subjects' heading will not show up as needing to have results entered for them, and the subject will not appear on the students' Progress Report. 

Tip: To quickly select multiple subjects that are all in a row click the name of the top subject (not the tick box, the subject name itself), and then hold down the Shift key on your keyboard while clicking the name of the subject at the bottom of the group. This will select all the subjects in between, allowing you to quickly move blocks of classes that are all similar (e.g. all Year 12 classes, or all classes that start with 'VCAL', etc...) from one column to the other.

Managing report cycles

Report cycles can have one of five statuses: Draft, Open, Closed, Published To Staff, or Published To All.

Draft	Reports cycle is still being configured and is not ready for results to be entered.
Open	Staff will receive a notification on their Compass homepage advising them that they can now enter results for the cycle.
Closed	Staff can no longer enter results. Data entered is visible to staff, but not students and parents.
Published To Staff	Staff can no longer enter results and the results that were entered are visible to staff only. Many schools do this in the period between the teachers having entered results and opening the cycle up to parents and students.
Published To All	Staff can no longer enter results and the results that were entered are visible to staff, students and parents. Parents will receive a homepage notification similar to the staff notification advising them that the report cycle is available to view.

To change the newly created report cycle from Draft to Open, simply click on the 'Open Cycle' button from the Cycle tab.

Important: Please note that once changed from Draft to Open the cycle cannot be put back into Draft mode, so this should only be done when you have completed the setup process.

     

Once a cycle is open, you can change the status of the reporting cycle by using the drop-down box that replaces the 'Open Cycle' button.

A cycle's status can be changed as many times as required, however after the school year is over, all report cycles for that year will be archived. This means that published results will still be available for viewing in the Compass portal, but you will be unable to edit the reporting cycle. 

In order for parents and students to be able to view the reports, the cycle status must be updated to Published To All.

Once published, parents receive a homepage notification when they log in to Compass.

Students do not have a homepage notification, but they can still view their results by going to the Reports tab of their profile.

Tip: After publishing your Progress Reports to All, Compass recommends posting a News Feed Item to parents and students notifying them that the Progress Reports have been released, and selecting 'Save and Send' to send a notification to the recipients - either an email or a push notification, depending on your selection.

Results Management

There are a number of reports that can be run from the dashboard of the Progress Report cycle that relate specifically to the results for that cycle. These reports are useful for downloading all of the raw data once the reports are finished, as well as seeing which teachers have not yet completed their reports so you can remind them before closing the cycle for publication. 

Export results to CSV	Exports a CSV file of the raw data of all results for all students in the cycle.
Export student averages to CSV	Exportsa CSV file of the numerical value for the GPA for all students in the cycle.
Outstanding reports by teacher	Exports a CSV file of all teachers detailing which classes do not yet have results data entered.
Export progress reports to PDF	Exports all report data for all students in the cycle as PDF files named by student code.

Statistics

The Statistics tab, which is available from the main Progress Reports section, not within your cycle, can be used for getting information across cycles. There are a number of filter options available under the 'Input' heading, and you can use these to quickly filter students who received above or below a specific result.

     

Once you've filtered the students you can use the 'Selected Students' button to quickly add a Chronicle entry for the students you want to select. You must tick the box on the far left to select a student, or you can select all quickly using the top tick box. This can be an excellent way of creating a Chronicle entry that notifies a student's parent that they received a perfect score or above a certain GPA and have received an award, or you can pick up students who are struggling and give them a Chronicle entry with an associated Group Activity that enrols them in additional Literacy classes or afterschool tutoring. For further information on setting up your Chronicle module to allow for this, please see the following Knowledge Base articles: Chronicle Administration and Group Activities​.

Progress Reports in Semester Reports

FAQs

How do I exclude certain classes from needing to write reports? All I can see are subjects...

• Option 1: Do Nothing. If the teacher leaves the results entry blank and does not give any results the student and parent will not see the class on the report at all. The downside of this is that the Reporting Coordinator cannot tell that the teacher intentionally left it blank, and the teacher will come up in the 'Outstanding reports by teacher' report.
• Option 2: Enter a value for all students that will result in the report being hidden. If you have selected either "Hide report grid if all NA" or "Hide report grid if all zero" on the Administration tab, then your teachers can either give the student the NA value that you've included as a reporting option, or the option that results in a 0 score, and this will exclude the class from appearing on the reports. The benefit of this method is that the teacher will also have entered results for the class, so they will not be included on the 'Outstanding reports by teacher' report. If you have also turned on the Fill Down Function this would only take a few seconds for the teacher to enter.

What's the difference between 'NA' and '0'?

This pertains to the 'Hide report grid if all NA/0' option on the Administration tab. This option exists so that you can exclude a class for a specific student, and depending on the settings for your cycle you may want to do this by either giving the student a GPA of 0, or giving them an 'NA' score for all of the AoAs.  As some schools do not use the GPA function (and thus have no results that get a 0 value), the NA option is available for those circumstances.

     

For the 'Hide report grid if all NA' do I have to use 'NA' exactly or can I use 'Not Applicable' or 'N/A'?

Any combination of NA will work (e.g. NA, N/A, na, n/a) as well as the words 'Not Applicable'.

My portal is calculating out of 4 but I want it to be out of 100, how do I do this?

Can I include HTML or an imported image in either the Header or Footer section?

You cannot include HTML or any images in the Header or Footer fields for Progress Reports. Any content that you want to include will need to be plain text.

Can all teachers who teach a class enter results?

How do I change the teacher whose name appears for the class?

If the Lead Teacher is away, can someone else enter results for them?

Only users with the admin-level permission for the module, which is GpaAdmin, will be able to enter results on behalf of another user.

How do I include my Progress Reports on my end of semester Semester Reports?

Linked Articles

• Chronicle Administration
  
• Group Activities
  
• Semester Reports Administration