Why board rules have to be a setting, not a code change
A school does not change its exam pattern to suit software. It changes a weightage because the correspondent decided Portfolio should count for a little more this year, or because this year's circular moved a mark from one component to another. If a change like that needs a developer and a new release, the report card waits on us, not on the school. This is exam scheme configuration in the plainest sense: exam types, maximum marks and weightage are settings a school edits, not code we ship. If your school is moving off paper registers entirely, the exam pattern is one of the things we set up during migration onboarding, alongside classes, sections and the fee structure.
A weightage entered for the year ahead has to survive that whole year unless the school itself decides to touch it again: it does not drift, and nobody has to re-enter it every term. Getting this right once, during onboarding, is also why the exam pattern is set up alongside classes, sections and fees rather than pieced together from scratch partway through the year by whoever happens to be at the keyboard.
Two starting presets, not two boards' circulars
Ecole ships two starting presets: Telangana State and CBSE. Both exist so a new school is not starting from a blank exam pattern on its first day, and both carry the same warning inside the product itself.
The tables below are Ecole's presets exactly as they ship today, not a restatement of what either board currently mandates. Your school's own scheme is the authority, and a preset exists to be checked and edited against it, never trusted blindly because a name on the screen matches the board your school follows. If anything here does not match your scheme, that is expected, and it is exactly what the check before the first report card is for. Questions about what else Ecole configures and what it does not are answered in the frequently asked questions.
The Telangana State preset
For a Telangana State board continuous evaluation ERP setup, the FA and SA pattern below is one exam scheme running across the year, not four separate systems bolted together. This is what ships today, before any school has touched it.
| Exam | Maximum marks | Weightage |
|---|---|---|
| FA1 | 20 | 5% |
| FA2 | 20 | 5% |
| SA1 | 80 | 20% |
| FA3 | 20 | 5% |
| FA4 | 20 | 5% |
| SA2 | 80 | 20% |
| SA3 | 80 | 40% |
| Percentage band | Grade | Grade point |
|---|---|---|
| 92 to 100 | A1 | 10 |
| 83 to 91 | A2 | 9 |
| 75 to 82 | B1 | 8 |
| 67 to 74 | B2 | 7 |
| 60 to 66 | C1 | 6 |
| 51 to 59 | C2 | 5 |
| 41 to 50 | D1 | 4 |
| 35 to 40 | D2 | 3 |
| 0 to 34 | E | 0 |
The CBSE preset
For a CBSE setup, the same idea applies with a different shape: fewer, larger components, and one examination that carries most of the weight. This is what ships today, before any school has touched it.
| Exam | Maximum marks | Weightage |
|---|---|---|
| Periodic Test | 20 | 5% |
| Multiple Assessment | 5 | 5% |
| Portfolio | 5 | 5% |
| Subject Enrichment | 5 | 5% |
| Annual Examination | 80 | 80% |
| Percentage band | Grade |
|---|---|
| 91 to 100 | A1 |
| 81 to 90 | A2 |
| 71 to 80 | B1 |
| 61 to 70 | B2 |
| 51 to 60 | C1 |
| 41 to 50 | C2 |
| 33 to 40 | D |
| 0 to 32 | E |
How the weightage combines: a worked example
Take one fictional student, call her Priya, sitting exams under the Telangana State preset above. This is an example to show the arithmetic, not a real result or a real learner.
- FA1: 18 out of 20 is 90%, worth 5% of the year: contributes 4.5
- FA2: 16 out of 20 is 80%, worth 5%: contributes 4
- SA1: 68 out of 80 is 85%, worth 20%: contributes 17
- FA3: 19 out of 20 is 95%, worth 5%: contributes 4.75
- FA4: 15 out of 20 is 75%, worth 5%: contributes 3.75
- SA2: 60 out of 80 is 75%, worth 20%: contributes 15
- SA3: 70 out of 80 is 87.5%, worth 40%: contributes 35
Add the seven contributions and Priya's year comes to 84%: 4.5 plus 4 plus 17 plus 4.75 plus 3.75 plus 15 plus 35. Against the Telangana State scale that sits inside 83 to 91, so it prints as an A2, grade point 9. This is exactly the sum Ecole runs every time it displays a grade: it never stores 84% or A2 anywhere against Priya's name, it recomputes both, every time, from the marks already on record.
When a result falls between two bands
Suppose the same arithmetic had instead landed on 91.4%. That figure is not inside either printed range: not 83 to 91, and not 92 to 100. Ecole's rule is that a percentage between two bands belongs to the lower one, so 91.4% prints as A2, not A1. The same rule applies at every boundary on both presets, so a result never simply falls through a gap between two printed ranges.
Marks are checked as they are typed
Entering marks is a keyboard-first grid that behaves like a spreadsheet, and it will not accept a mark above the maximum for that component. If a Portfolio out of 5 has someone type 7 into it, Ecole refuses the entry there and then, naming the child and the exact part of the exam it belongs to, rather than letting a typing mistake travel all the way to a printed report card. A subject teacher can save partway through a class and come back later, and only ever sees marks for their own subjects and their own sections, never anyone else's.
The same grid treats a low mark and an impossible one very differently. A poor score for a strong student raises no objection, because a low mark is simply data, not a defect to be caught. A score above the maximum raises one immediately, because no student, however capable, can score more than the paper allows, and letting that number sit in the system even briefly risks it reaching a report card before anyone notices it was ever wrong.
Theory, practical and grade-only subjects
Where an exam splits theory and practical, Ecole keeps the two apart rather than folding them into one number too early in the process. A theory paper and a practical paper for the same subject are recorded and weighted separately where the exam pattern calls for it, so a strong practical score does not quietly stand in for a weak theory one, or the other way round, unless the school's own scheme says that is how the subject is meant to work. Subjects that are graded rather than marked, the kind most schools call co-scholastic, are supported as grade-only, so no invented percentage sits quietly behind a grade that was never meant to be a percentage in the first place.
Report cards, and why a preset only applies once
The report card is yours
A generic search for CBSE report card generator software tends to turn up a template with a badge dropped somewhere on it. Ecole instead builds the report card in your school's own format and layout during onboarding, with your logo already in place rather than pasted over somebody else's design. Class teacher remarks reach the printed card, and a principal or correspondent can print an entire section's report cards in one action, as PDFs.
A preset does not apply twice
Once a year already has exams recorded against the Telangana State or CBSE preset, applying that preset again is refused rather than merged quietly on top of what is already there. That is deliberate: a scheme already used to record real marks should not be reshaped silently by a second pass of the same preset carrying different numbers. If the exam pattern genuinely needs to change, it is changed directly, in the open, not by reapplying a preset over marks that already exist.