In QuickSchools you can produce Progress Reports via the Gradebook or the Report Card modules. Here we elaborate on the available options:
Definitions: Progress Reports vs. Report Cards
Progress Reports are a snapshot of how the student is progressing within the school year. Progress Reports can be generated as frequently as you want. You can do it once per term, or one a month, or even weekly.
In contrast, Report Cards are generated only ONCE per term, and is a culminating assessment for that academic term. We have a robust Report Cards module, where you can choose from a variety of different templates, and configure elements to include. Since Report Cards are intended to be comprehensive, they can be set up to display grades, comments, narratives and even standards.
Producing Progress Reports
There are essentially 2 ways to produce Progress Reports. The simplest way is to print the Gradebook for each student. The PDF generated from the Gradebook contains all the assessments as well as comments. And for many schools, this is sufficient for parent teacher conferences and mid-term reporting. Parents can even print this off from the Parent Portal as frequently as they want.
The second way is to use the Report Card module, which allows you to add more detail to the document (like comments, etc). By using the Report Cards module, you can leverage the flexibility of the module, while still providing a snapshot of the calculated grades from the Gradebook (simply by locking the session). Progress Reports produced in this way can be published, printed and emailed parents as a PDF document.
Templates for Progress Reports
When configuring Progress Reports within the Report Cards module, it’s important to select a specific type of template, in particular the Single-Term Template.
In QuickSchools we essentially have 2 types of report card templates:
- Single-Term Templates
- Multi-Term Templates
Single-term templates report on the current academic term. It has all the other capabilities of a report card template, in terms of capturing comments, narratives and standards. However, you only see grades for the time the session is locked (i.e. a snapshot). Here are some examples of single-term report card templates:

Multi-term templates display grades for multiple terms. So you could have columns for 2 semesters, or 3 trimesters, or 4 quarters. The grades for each term gets filled as the academic year progresses. Here are some examples of multi-term report card templates:
Multi-term templates rely on other sessions (within the academic year) that are using multi-term templates in order to fill the columns across the different terms. This means that each term can/should only have ONE session linked to a multi-term template. As a result, Progress Reports should ALWAYS use single-term templates, in order to respect the one-multi-term-session-per-term rule.
Conclusion / Summary
The takeaways for Progress Reports are as follows:
- Progress Reports can be produced by either:
- printing the Gradebooks as a PDF for each student, or by
- using the Report Cards module to generate a PDF for each student.
- If using the Report Cards to produce Progress Reports, ALWAYS use a single-term template.
If you have questions about configuring your report cards, please feel free to contact our technical support staff via email or chat.
[…] mentioned previously, the Report Cards module is still an excellent module for producing Progress Reports, since progress reports that are generated in the Report Cards module are stored separately under […]
[…] you may also decide to have MULTIPLE report card sessions. For example, you may decide to have a mid-term progress report, in addition to an end-of-term report card. Some schools will go insofar as a weekly or monthly […]