Reports Overview
A report is one pupil's report card for a school year and one or more reporting periods. MarkBook builds it from the marks and comments your teachers already entered, so nobody retypes grades. This page shows the whole journey and where to find each step.
The journey of a report
- Set up a report template (once, by an administrator). It decides the pages, the columns and the look. See Report Templates.
- Choose an approval workflow (optional). It decides who must approve a report before parents see it. See Review & Approval.
- Generate the reports for a class. See Generating Reports.
- Teachers finish and submit the drafts. Reviewers approve them or ask for changes.
- Publish. The report is frozen, a PDF is archived and families are told. See Publishing Reports.
- E-mail parents a download link, if your school uses it. See E-mailing Reports to Parents.
- Follow up. See who opened and confirmed each report in Report Access.
The Reports screen
Open Reports in the sidebar. The screen has four tabs:
| Tab | What it is for |
|---|---|
| Reports | The list of reports, split by status, with bulk actions and export. |
| Progress | How far teachers are with marks, comments and reports. See Progress. |
| Report access | Which parents opened and confirmed published reports. See Report Access. |
| Report data | A spreadsheet-style view of every field in the reports. See Report Data. |
Every tab starts with the same filter row: a search box, Academic year, Report template, a groups picker, Apply and Clear. Change the filters, then press Apply. Clear puts them back to the defaults. The numbers on the cards below the filters always match the filters you applied.
Status cards on the Reports tab
Under the filters you see four coloured cards:
| Card | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Draft | Reports being written. Reports a reviewer sent back ("Changes requested") are in this card too. |
| Pending approval | Submitted and waiting for a reviewer. |
| Approved | Approved and ready to publish. |
| Published | Frozen and visible to families. |
A card is a button. Click it and the table below shows only that status. The pressed card has a green tick. The bulk Actions menu follows the card you chose: for example, Publish reports appears on Draft (when your school has no approval step) and Approved, never on Pending approval.
The table has a Columns button to hide or show columns, and an Export button. The export dialog opens full width and offers PDF, XLS and CSV.
Sort and filter the table
Click a column title's arrows to sort: Student Name, Report name, Author | Created (by creation time) and Subjects (by number of subjects). Click the funnel next to a title to filter that column. The Subjects funnel has a slider with two handles: drag them to show, for example, only reports with 0 to 4 subjects.
Sort and filters work on all the reports that match your filters, not only on the page you see. The table goes back to page 1 after each change. The funnel lists (authors, groups, periods) also come from all the matching reports.
If a sort by student name or by subjects, a period filter or a subjects filter covers more than 5,000 reports, MarkBook asks you to narrow the filters above the table first.
Example
It is the last week of Term 1. The head of Year 7 opens Reports, picks the year "2026–2027", the template "Year 7 Term Report" and group "7A", then presses Apply. The cards say Draft 18, Pending approval 6, Approved 4, Published 2. She clicks Pending approval to see who is waiting for a decision.
Who can do what
Each step needs a permission that your administrator gives on Configuration → Users & Roles. The main ones are:
| Permission | Allows |
|---|---|
| View reports | Open the list and read a report. |
| Create reports | Generate reports for a class. |
| Edit reports | Change a report's text and page selection. |
| Submit for approval | Send a draft to a reviewer. |
| Approve or request changes | Decide on a pending report. |
| Publish to parents | Publish a report. |
| Unpublish | Take a published report back. |
| Delete reports | Remove a report from the list. |
| Bulk generate and publish | Act on many reports at once. |
| Manage report templates, Manage approval workflows | Change templates and workflows. |
Managers hold all of these. If a button is missing, the usual reason is a missing permission. See Roles & Permissions.
Where the settings are
All report settings are under Configuration → Reports:
- Report templates
- Approval Workflows
- Report e-mails
- Comment bank
The Communication entry in the sidebar shows every report e-mail that was sent.
Edge cases
- A report only shows marks and comments from the periods it covers.
- Changing a template changes every draft that uses it. Published reports do not change, because they are frozen.
- Reports are started from the pupil's main class. See Generating Reports.