Hand a year over

Most schools lose a term's knowledge the day the person who built the spreadsheet leaves. The product's answer is that the record does not belong to a person, but a handover still has work in it.

Create the account first, not last

A new administrator needs an account before the old one is closed, or there is a gap in which nobody can add a teacher or publish a result. Two administrators at once is fine; the record says who did what.

Walk the four decisions

A handover that reads like a setting is a handover that will be re-decided. Go through the decisions instead:

• the year and its terms, and whether the next year already exists;
• the grading policy per subject, and which subjects differ from the year's default;
• the open corrections, and who is waiting on whom;
• the published results, and the version each was issued as.

The last two are the ones a new administrator is most often surprised by, because they are the ones with other people's names on them.

Read one correction trail together

Not to check the work, but so that the person taking over has seen the shape once: who asked, who approved, what the value was before. That is the sentence they will have to write in a dispute.

What never needs handing over

A password, a spreadsheet formula held in someone's head, or a private note of what a mark "really" meant. If any of those exists, the record is incomplete and the handover is the moment to fix it.