This is a thoroughly worthwhile piece
of software for school teachers with a
BBC Micro. It sorts exam marks for
any class of up to 40 children in a year
group.
The maximum mark can be set to any
level and automatic range checking is
done.
The final lists can be printed
alphabetically by year or form as well as
numerically. Simple bar charts are
produced of results and the degree of
scatter of results is calculated and a
"balanced" mark presented.
It is possible to save data to tape and
retrieve it again. This obviously takes
some time and I have found the program
most useful for simply processing large
lists of marks without bothering to save
the data.
It will bemore usein a secondary and
middle school, than injunior and infants
schools.
The program is menu driven, and is
easy to use. I have not succeeded in
crashing it and would consider it robust
enough for those of us who lack
confidence when confronted by the
micro.
There are some inconveniences. It is
impossible to score zero on a test. Well,
very few youngsters ever do, but I
wanted to use a zero to show that
someone was absent.
It would have been nice to add a few
simple codes to show sickness or an
estimated mark etc., otherwise one is left
with an incomplete mark list.
This is a useful piece of simple
software, and it will save keyboard
hacks all over the country several hours
programming their own mark list
software.
1st April 1984
