Leadership Roles
Leadership roles decide whose markbooks a person reaches. A teacher reaches their own. A leader also reaches everything in the area they lead. Use leadership roles when the people who oversee a subject or a year group must see and sometimes edit the marks of colleagues. Open them from Configuration → Users & Roles → Who leads what.
Leadership roles are separate from permission roles. A leadership role gives reach. A permission role gives abilities. A leader needs both. A head of department whose role cannot enter marks still only reads. A teacher with every permission still only reaches their own markbooks.
The three leadership roles
| Role | Leads | Reaches |
|---|---|---|
| Head of department | One subject | Every markbook of that subject, in every class |
| Year group coordinator | One year group | Every markbook of that year group, in every subject |
| SLT | The whole school | Every markbook |
A person can hold several assignments. Someone who heads Mathematics and coordinates Year 7 reaches all of Mathematics and all of Year 7. Reach combines; it is never the overlap.
Assign a leadership role
You need the permission Assign leadership roles (managers have it).
- Open Configuration → Users & Roles → Who leads what.
- Press Assign a role.
- Choose the person and the role.
- For Head of department, choose the subject. For Year group coordinator, choose the year group. SLT takes no subject or group, because it covers the school.
- Save.
Each subject or year group is its own assignment. Someone who leads three subjects has three rows, so you can remove one without touching the others. Removing an assignment takes effect straight away.
You can also manage one person's assignments on the Users tab. Press Change roles. The panel has a "Leadership in the school" section where you add or remove assignments. Changes there apply at once, while role ticks need Save.
Example: Ms Ionescu heads Science. Add her as Head of department for Science and give her the Senior teacher permission role. She now sees every Science markbook in the school, can edit leader-only columns such as the target grade, and can review reports.
What a leader gains
- Markbooks. They open the markbooks they lead, even if no one has created that class and subject yet. With View the marks grid alone they can open it. To change marks they also need Enter and change marks.
- Leader-only columns. Some columns allow editing only by leaders. A column can name which leaders qualify: head of department of that subject, coordinator of that year group, or SLT. A head of Drama edits Drama's column, not Mathematics. See Column Library.
- Checking columns. Leaders approve columns and comments that teachers send for checking. See Checking & Approving Columns.
- Report approval. A workflow may let leaders approve reports. SLT approves anywhere. A coordinator approves reports of their year group. Heads of department are left out on purpose, because a head covers one subject and a report card covers all of them. This works only when the workflow switches on leaders approving, which is off by default.
- The dashboard. The Dashboard shows the work of the classes they lead. See Dashboard.
Let heads of department read reports
By default, a head of department sees only the reports they created. You can widen that.
- Open Configuration → Users & Roles → Who leads what.
- Switch on Heads of department can read reports.
Then a head of department can open, preview and download the reports of every class where one of their subjects is taught, including classes they do not teach. They see all the student's subjects on each report. They still cannot edit, approve or publish. The setting is off by default.
Year group coordinators always see the reports of their classes. SLT sees every report. This setting does not change either.
The page shows a small table of who can read which reports, so you can check the result.
Teachers allocated to a subject
Leadership is not the only way to reach more markbooks. On a markbook template, a subject can be allocated to named teachers. See Markbook Templates.
An allocation has limits:
- The teacher reaches the subject only in the classes they teach. If the template names classes, only those. Never every class of the school.
- If MarkBook cannot confirm which classes the teacher teaches, it gives no reach. It does not guess.
- Changing a template subject's teachers needs Assign leadership roles as well as Markbook templates. The teacher picker is disabled for anyone without it.
- A new teacher you name must be active staff of the school.
Form tutor subjects
A subject can be marked as a form tutor subject (under Configuration → Assessment → Subjects). Only the main teachers of a class, marked with a star in Kinderpedia, write it for that class. A hand allocation on the template is not used for it. Leaders, managers and full-access users are unchanged. The template page lists each class's tutors and warns when a class has none.
Edge cases
- A leader who is also a class teacher reaches both sets of markbooks.
- A person who teaches no class in Kinderpedia, such as a principal who teaches Physics, can only reach markbooks through leadership. Report pages still name them as a subject teacher.
- A coordinator reaches their year group's classes and, in the class pickers, those classes are added to the ones Kinderpedia assigns them.
- Heads of department and class lists. A head of department sees the classes where their subject is taught, according to the template and the subject's Display in setting.