Grades, GPA, and the transcript
Grades are optional for younger children and the backbone of the record for a high schooler. What appears depends on the child’s grade level, so a seven-year-old’s record has no GPA machinery in it at all.
Choosing a grading scale
Set it in Settings, under Your homeschool, in the Grading row. Records shows the one you use under How it adds up, and that row opens the same place in Settings. The choice is for the school year you are working in, the one chosen under Working in, and it applies to all your children in that year rather than one child at a time. There are three:
Letter grades. A+ to F, picked from a row of buttons. The default, and the one an admissions office reads without translation.
Percentages. A number from 0 to 100.
Mastery / narrative. A short line on what the child can do now, in place of a mark. Suited to how many families actually assess, and it lands on the record as words rather than as a number to average, so there is no GPA.
You can change the grading until the first grade of the school year is saved. From then on, that year keeps its scale, so a grade is never read on a scale it was not given. A new school year starts on the same grading as the year you made it from.
Recording a grade
Two routes, and they reach the same place. Capture a grade as you go: choose Grade, pick the one child it is for, and choose the lesson or the subject, because the grade lands in Records under that subject. Or open Records, choose the child at the top of the page, and open a subject’s row, which is the better route when you are entering several at once. Both use the same grade field, set by your grading.
An open row lists the grades already there, each with what it was for and its date, and below them the form for a new one: the grade, what it was for if you want to say, and the Date. The date starts on today and will not accept a later one. Save grade adds it, or Save note under mastery. The small cross beside a grade removes it, with Undo to put it back.
What builds itself from that
Each subject’s row shows the average of its grades, as a letter or a percentage to match your grading, or under mastery how many notes it holds. A child with nothing graded yet has no grade column at all, and it appears with the first grade.
For 9th to 12th grade, Subjects becomes Courses and each course shows its credit. The top of the page adds GPA, averaged across the high-school years with each course counted by its credits, and Credits earned, with the credits this year adds. Once one subject is a course, each subject that is not one is marked Not on the transcript, so you can see what the transcript will hold.
Building the transcript
There is no separate transcript builder to fill in. The transcript is assembled from what is already on the record, which is the point of recording as you go. To get a complete one:
1. Set your homeschool name in Settings, under Your homeschool. It prints at the top of the document as the issuing school. Under Children, a high schooler also has Name on transcripts, for a full legal name. Left empty, the transcript prints their first name.
2. In Settings, under Subjects, open each subject that is a high-school course, turn on This is a high-school course, and check its Credits.
3. Record grades against those courses.
4. Open Records, choose the child, and look over Courses: each course with its credit and its grade. That is what the transcript is made from.
5. Under Documents, press Make PDF on the Transcript row. When it is ready, Download appears under its name, with when it was made.
Several years on one transcript
A transcript covers a high school career rather than a single year, so courses are grouped by the year they were taken and the cumulative GPA runs across all of them, whichever year Records is showing. This is the reason a child’s grade level is recorded per school year rather than as one current value. The transcript prints one grading scale for every year on it, so for a high schooler, choose the grading once and keep it. If you keep hours, a year with hours on the record also shows each course’s hours, and a year with none, such as one from before you counted hours, leaves the Hours column out.
What this document is
A parent-issued transcript. That is the ordinary and accepted form for a homeschooled applicant, and colleges receive them routinely. It is not an accredited school’s transcript, we are not an accrediting body, and nothing in the document claims otherwise. If a particular college asks for something more, ask them directly what they need.
Frequently asked questions
Do I have to grade everything? No. Grades are optional, and for a younger child many families record almost none. They matter most for a high schooler, where courses and credits are what a transcript is assembled from.
Can I change the grading scale later? Until the first grade of the school year is saved, yes, in Settings under Your homeschool. After that, the year keeps its scale, so nothing you recorded is ever read on a different one. A new school year starts on the same grading as the year you made it from. To change it, choose that year under Working in, in Settings under School year, before its first grade is saved.
Will a college accept a parent-issued transcript? Colleges receive them routinely from homeschooled applicants, and it is the ordinary form for a family that is not enrolled in an accredited program. It is not an accredited school’s transcript and does not claim to be. If a particular college wants something further, ask them directly.
Where to go next
Exporting records covers the other documents and what each one is for.