The biggest waste in managing middle school grades is starting everything two weeks before the exam. By that point a substantial part is often already fixed, because performance assessments are spread through the term.

A raw score is built from two blocks

Middle school subject grades are calculated by applying weightings to written and performance assessment. Following the academic records guidelines of the metropolitan or provincial office of education, each school draws up its own academic records regulations and calculates accordingly.

What matters here is that the weightings are not fixed values. They differ by subject within the same year group, and differ by school for the same subject. In some subjects performance assessment is more than half; in others written assessment dominates. Subjects centred on practical work are sometimes run on performance assessment alone, with no written exam.

So a generalisation of the form "performance assessment is X per cent in middle school" does not hold. What has to be checked is your own child's school's regulations.

How to find the material published at the start of term

Schools give notice of their assessment plans at the start of each term. These set out the names and weightings of written assessments and the performance assessment areas and the weighting of each.

The routes to find them are generally as follows.

• The school website — under "academic records regulations", "assessment plan" or "curriculum"
• Letters home — the assessment guidance distributed at the start of term
• Class or subject teachers — ask directly if the above are hard to find

Get hold of this once and the shape of the whole semester becomes visible. The difference between starting a term knowing what is assessed in which subject and when, and starting without knowing, shows up less in exam results than in how learning is distributed across the term.

The typical ways marks are lost in performance assessment

Marks in performance assessment are usually lost on process rather than because the work was too hard.

• Missing the deadline — marks come off even if the content is good. Deadline management comes ahead of ability.
• Not reading the marking criteria — what is being assessed is published, and students prepare without looking at it.
• Absence and non-attendance — how a missed assessment is handled follows the regulations. Where there is an unavoidable reason, it has to be notified in advance.
• Not recording a role in group work — there is often a set way in which individual contribution is verified.

None of these four has anything to do with how much study was done. Having the calendar and the criteria in hand prevents most of them.

A table worth making at the start of term

No complicated tool is needed. One line per subject is enough.

• Subject / written weighting / performance weighting
• Names of performance assessment areas and when they are scheduled
• For anything with a submission, the deadline

Simply sticking that on the fridge or the desk removes the losses that come from not knowing. The change that brought Year 7 grades into high school entry is set out separately in Middle School. Read alongside the weightings, it makes a three-year plan easier to build.

In summary

The structure of middle school grades depends on weightings set by the school, and that information is already published at the start of term. Checking two weeks before the exam is too late. Finding the assessment plan on the school website in the first week of term and writing down the weightings per subject is the cheapest and most reliable form of grade management there is.