How to use the Report Cards module

ARTICLE: How to use the Report Cards module

Report Cards is a module that lets you design, mark and distribute any number of performance reporting templates to your students, parents and staff in REACH. Report templates can be used to mark student or to mark staff and a reporting history will generate for each individual that is being marked in the Performance Reports module.

There are four components to the Report Cards module:

  1. Report Template is where you design your report templates, create the reporting sections, the layout and the scoring or comment sections for each report template.
  2. Report Management is where you determine which Templates are currently open for scoring and who the subjects are for that report.
  3. Report Scoring Matrix is the dashboard where you score the components for each report template that is currently open for completion.  
  4. Publish your Report Cards to PDF document or by direct email to parents


Report templates 

These are the designs that you create and use to publish your performance reports. 

You have the freedom to design an unlimited number of report templates and within each template you can set the following design profiles.
  • Report Heading text
  • Single or double column layouts
  • Unlimited number of sections, with section name
  • Unlimited number of questions per section
  • Each question can be either a star rating or free text component


Step 1 - Create new template

Click the Create New template button and provide your template with a name and report heading.  Determine also whether your template will be single column of content when published or two column design.



Step 2 - Create report sections

When creating a section you need to

  • Provide your section with a heading or title
  • Determine whether questions in your section will display content side-by-side or as question-new line--answer




Step 3  -  Set your questions

You an create any number of questions within each section by clicking the Add New Question button. With each question you can determine whether the answer or content will be a star rating system or free text comment.

If you set your question as a star rating answer type then you can also set the minimum and maximum number of stars. In addition, for each question you can determine its sequence within the section by setting the ordinal number sequence.



Edit your templates at any time

You can edit your report template by adding new sections or questions, or editing existing sections or questions at any time.




Report Management

 The Report Management section is used to control which report templates are being used or are open for marking and when they will remain open. 



  1.   Create a name for the report that you want to produce (eg: Term 1 Boarding Report)
  2.   Select the Report Card template that you want to use for this report
  3.   Select the start and end dates for the reporting period.  This will determine "when" the report will be available to staff for scoring or marking 

Open reports will become available for marking in the Report Scoring Matrix for the duration of their open period.

Once a report is closed the results from that report will be visible in the Student Summary Dashboard in their Performance Reports menu item.



Report Scoring Matrix

The Report Scoring Matrix is your report marking dashboard.

Here you will be able to access a list of the reports that are currently open for marking and mark your students for the relevant questions for each section.

How to score or mark a report card

You can score student individually or in bulk by question or field item.  


  1. Select the Report that you want to score in the report selection field.
  2. Set the student population to reflect the students that you want to mark or display by using your filters (Year, House, Location, Group)
  3. Scoring a Single Field
    1. Clicking into any single field will open the scoring element (star selector or text element) where you can set your score or comment.
  4. Scoring in Bulk
    1. To score in bulk you can use the left column selector to select multiple students individually.
    2. To select all students in your screen view select the selection box which is at the same level as the column titles.
    3. Once you have selected your quantity of students then select the Toggle option above the title of any question or field and it will open the scoring element for that question or field



Publishing Reports

You can publish report cards as a hard copy pdf file or as a PDF hyperlink in an email notification.

Publishing student report cards is done from the Scoring Matrix screen.



Steps to publish your Report Cards

Follow these basic steps in the Scoring Matrix screen to publish individual or multiple Report Cards.

  1. Select the report template that you want to publish in the Select Report field.
  2. Filter your view of students to represent the set of students that you want to report on.
    1. You can filter your view by Year, House, Location or Group. 
    2. Adding more than one selection will set the view to students that match all (ie: student matches at least t one item from each of the filter categories set)
  3. Select all or select individual students from the screen view that you want to publish.
  4. Publish to either a PDF document or publish to directly to email to the parents associated to the selected students.

Publish to PDF document

When publishing to a PDF document Reach will publish all selected reports to a single PDF document with page separation for each student report. If you want to separate the PDF into separate individual PDF documents you can use a PDF management tool that will separate page breaks into separate documents.

Publish as Email to Parents

When publishing reports by email to parents each individual student report will be sent to the parents associated with each student.  The email will include a link to the PDF document and parents receiving the report by email will be able to view or download the document (PDF) from their web browser.  A message template for notification to the parents will appear before you send the email reports.


Student Summary view of Report Cards

When Report Cards are scored, published and closed they will appear as historic reports in the student’s profile, in the Student Summary Dashboard.
All Report Card templates that have been completed for a student will appear in the student’s Performance Reports Summary with each Report Card template displaying as a different table in the view. This view provided an excellent overview of student progress over time and helps to quickly identify progress or deterioration trends.

Hover to view comments
Where Text comment elements are used Reach will automatically collapse these so that the table can display on the screen adequately however the comments are easily accessed by hovering over the element to see the content.