How do I run staff appraisals, and how are the automatic scores worked out?

What it is

Staff Appraisal lets a school appraise its teachers and other staff once or twice a year. It has four screens, all in the New menu under the Staff Appraisal heading: Appraisal Criteria, Appraisal Cycles, Appraisals and Appraisal Reports. Criteria the school's own records can answer — attendance, punctuality, exam results of the classes a teacher teaches, and parent ratings after parent-teacher meetings — are scored automatically, and each automatic score shows the arithmetic behind it. The other criteria are rated by the appraiser.

Run an appraisal round

1. New → Staff Appraisal → Appraisal Criteria — check the criteria. A ready-made set of 16 is already there (6 automatic, 10 rated by hand). Change weights, the rating scale (1–3, 1–4, 1–5 or 1–10), which designation groups a criterion applies to, or add your own. Weights are relative — they do not need to add up to 100.
2. New → Staff Appraisal → Appraisal Cycles → New cycle — give it a title (for example "Annual Appraisal 2026-27"), the period it covers, the campus, the designation groups, the appraiser and a due date. Tick self-rating if employees fill in their own ratings too. It saves as a Draft.
3. Tick the cycle and press Open. One appraisal is created for every active employee the cycle covers, and the automatic criteria are scored for the period.
4. New → Staff Appraisal → Appraisals — pick the cycle, tick an employee, press Open appraisal. Rate each criterion (or tick N/A if it does not apply), write strengths, areas to improve and an overall comment, choose a recommendation, then Save.
5. When everything is rated, press Save and submit. The total and grade are locked.
6. Print the form (Print), let the employee read and sign it, then Record acknowledgement with the date, whether they agree, and their remark.
7. New → Staff Appraisal → Appraisal Reports — the cycle summary (every employee with every criterion's score, averages and the grade spread, with CSV export and print) and each employee's history across cycles. Close the cycle on Appraisal Cycles when the round is finished.

How the automatic scores are worked out

• Attendance = (Present + Late + Short Leave) ÷ working days × 100. Off Days are not working days. Months entered as monthly attendance count the same way as HRM → Combine Attendance Report counts them.
• Punctuality = Present ÷ (Present + Late) × 100.
• No absence without leave = (working days − Absent) ÷ working days × 100. Approved leave is not an absence.
• Average result and pass rate of the classes taught come from exam results whose award list names the teacher, with test dates in the period, present students only, using the school's pass mark.
• Parent feedback = the average parent rating (1–5) after parent-teacher meetings the employee held, × 20.

Each measured value is compared with the criterion's target: score = value ÷ target × 100, never more than 100. A manual rating of 4 on a 1–5 scale scores 80. The total is the weighted average of the criteria that have a score, and the grade comes from the grade bands on the Appraisal Criteria screen.

Common questions

• "Not enough data" on a criterion — there were fewer than 10 working days of attendance, 15 exam results or 3 parent ratings in the period. That criterion is left out of the total, not counted as zero, so non-teaching staff are not marked down on exam results. Fix the attendance or marks, then press Compute auto-scores on the Appraisals screen.
• Overriding an automatic score — choose a rating instead of Auto and write the reason in the comment; the comment is required.
• Changing a submitted appraisal — open it and use Reopen with a reason. The acknowledgement is cleared and it must be submitted again. Nothing can change while the cycle is closed.
• A new teacher joined after the cycle opened — tick the cycle on Appraisal Cycles and press Add new staff. To leave someone out of a cycle, use Exclude on the Appraisals screen.
• Increment recommendation — it is only a recommendation. The increment itself is still made and approved in HRM → Add Approval → Increment.

If the screens are missing or greyed out

Each screen has its own privilege: HRM :: Appraisal Criteria, HRM :: Appraisal Cycles, HRM :: Appraisals and HRM :: Appraisal Reports. They are new, so nobody holds them until they are granted: the school's admin ticks them for the right logins in Admin → Users & Privileges. A login limited to some campuses only sees those campuses' appraisals and cannot set up an all-campus cycle.

The New menu is between General and Core. It appears only when the institute has an enabled new module, and lists only enabled modules. Staff privileges still control access.