Transfers and promotions

Two ordinary events change a school's records: a student moves, and a year ends. Both are recorded rather than typed over, and this page describes what that means for a school that has done either.

A student who moves

A placement is the record that a student was in a particular class for a particular year, and it is dated. A student who changes class mid-year therefore has two placements rather than one edited record.

The consequence is that a question about an earlier part of the year has an answer: which class the student was in, when the move happened, and what was marked before it. A transfer to another school is the same shape, with the placement ending rather than being replaced.

A student who leaves keeps their marks, and a student who returns keeps their record. Neither is a reason to delete a row.

A year that ends

Promotion is a decision, not a calculation. The product calculates results and ranks them within their scope; a school decides who moves up, and that decision reads from the published record rather than from a live calculation, so the numbers the decision was made from cannot move afterwards.

Ranking and promotion are one of the standardized features a school can be given (the key is promotion), which is what lets a deployment offer the year without it.

Where the record of both lives

There is no separate "history" screen: the placements are the history, and the published results are the decisions' basis. The academic year describes the structure they hang from, and Results and publication describes the snapshots a promotion decision reads.