A class broadsheet is the wide results grid: learners down the side, subjects across the top, and a total, an average and a letter at the end of each row. It is the one screen that answers “how is this class doing?”, and the one a head teacher puts in front of a board meeting.

Open Assessment > Class Broadsheet, choose a Class and a Term, and the board builds itself from the marks already submitted. The head of department uses it to spot a class that is drifting and a subject nobody is marking. The school owner uses it before signing results off, because the screen will not let anyone publish a term while a single learner’s mark is still missing from a single subject.

Nothing on this screen is entered by hand. Subjects appear because they are taught to that class, marks appear because they were submitted, and the ranking is calculated from the totals. That is what makes the board trustworthy as a document: every figure on it can be traced back to a named teacher and a named moment.

One row per learner, one column per subject

The learner’s name and matricule sit at the left, with a small PDF icon that opens that learner’s report card slip in a new tab — worth using once per class before a board meeting, because it answers the question “what will they actually see?” better than any spreadsheet. A dash where a mark is missing means the mark has not been submitted rather than that it was a zero.

The coefficient under each subject is not decoration

Each subject header carries its coefficient. The Total is not a plain sum: it multiplies each subject average by its coefficient before adding, so a subject weighted twice as heavily really does count twice as heavily. If your school does not use coefficients, they simply read 1 and the total behaves like a plain average of the subjects.

Equal totals share a rank

Ranking is dense: two learners on exactly the same total hold the same rank, and the next distinct total takes the next number down. Three learners tied on 78 out of 100 are all 1st, and the next learner is 4th, not 2nd. That is the convention every results table uses, and it is the one to keep if you are going to announce a “best in class”. Where two learners tie, sort by name and the order between them is alphabetical.

Sort by what the conversation is about

The Sort By selector offers Rank, Total Score and Student Name. Rank and Total Score are the same ordering; Student Name is what you want when you are going round the rows checking matricules, or reading a list aloud. Change it and the ranks stay attached to their learners — only the row order moves.

Every cell must be submitted, not merely filled

Publication is blocked until every learner has a submitted mark in every subject the class sits. Saved-but-not-submitted marks do not count, which is deliberate: a draft a teacher forgot to submit should not become a term result because nobody checked. The gate counts cells, so one absent learner with a mark missing in one subject is enough to hold the whole class.

The amber banner names exactly what is blocking you

Rather than a bare refusal, the banner lists every subject that is short, with its submitted and expected counts. That turns a vague “results not available” into a phone call you can make in the next minute: Mathematics 28/32 means four named learners in that subject still owe a submitted mark, and the teacher will know immediately who they are.

Why the gate exists at all

A broadsheet is what a parent is shown and what a school is judged on. If it can be published while one subject is missing, two learners with identical performance in six subjects get different totals depending on which teacher pressed which button first, and the difference is invisible on the document. The gate makes that impossible by construction, and it does so without any extra clicking from you.

Once published

Publishing is not a status you have to maintain. Pressing the button makes the submitted marks the official record for that class and term, and the report cards read from it. Keep the button in your routine at the end of each marking round rather than at the end of term, so that a class is never left sitting on a board nobody has signed off.

A secondary class, term by term

A school running sequences rather than terms gets an expanded board: each subject opens into a sub-column per sequence, so you can see at a glance that a learner is strong in the first sequence and has not yet handed anything in for the second. The annual view does the same thing with terms instead. Both are the same tool answering a different question — “where are they now?” rather than “where did they end up?”

A university programme shows credits

Choose an annual unit and the annual board replaces the Total column with GPA and credits earned out of credits attempted. That is the figure a registrar needs, and it is why an annual university board should be read with the same caution as a term one: the gate still checks submission before anything is published.

A vocational programme shows progression

Here each subject is a tick or a clock rather than a number, because what matters is whether the module was completed. Two extra columns appear: a progression bar showing completed modules out of the total, and a status of Eligible or In Progress. An eligible learner gets a Generate button that produces the certificate; an ineligible one does not, so nobody can certify a module that is still open.

Four ways out of the screen

Excel (CSV) gives you the whole grid for a spreadsheet, which is what a head of department wants when building an analysis. PDF gives the printed board for a file or a notice board. Report cards (PDF) gives one slip per learner in a single download — the fastest way to prepare a distribution of forty slips. The small PDF icon in each row opens just that learner’s slip, which is the one to use when a parent arrives at the office for their own child only.