Exams and results troubleshooting

Every reason the results publish button refuses, who is allowed to press it, why a hall ticket omits an accommodation, and when revaluation opens.

Getting started guide for day and boarding schools.

Last updated August 29, 2026

Exams separate coordination from participation. Coordinators build sessions, schedules, seating, and publish results; participants only ever see their own setter tasks, marking tasks, invigilation duties, and homeroom exam view. Almost every "I cannot see the exam screens" report is that split, and almost every "publish will not work" report is one of five specific refusals listed below, each of which names the record blocking it.

Permission problem or configuration problem?

A permission problem returns 403 and depends only on who is signed in: coordination needs Platform Admin, the office Admin role, Principal, Vice Principal, or Examination committee membership, and publishing additionally needs the committee chair when a committee governs the session. A configuration problem returns 400, 409, or 423 and depends on the session, so it reproduces for everyone including a Platform Admin. If a colleague with more authority hits the same refusal, stop looking at roles and read the code in the response.

Publishing results

Symptom	Cause	Fix
400, no published papers in this session	Papers are still draft	Publish the papers themselves before publishing the session. Only papers with status PUBLISHED contribute grade cards.
409, some students have no mark rows	Marks are incomplete for a published paper	Finish the marking, or publish again acknowledging incomplete marks. The response returns the first fifty affected students.
409, class teacher sign-off required	A homeroom has not signed off	Each listed class teacher signs off before publish. There is no override for this check.
409, results already published	A second publish without republish	Pass republish to rebuild grade cards deliberately. The first publish also froze marks on every published paper.
423, session is archive-frozen	The session was archived	Neither publish nor revoke works once a session is frozen. Frozen history is intentionally immutable.

Access and family visibility

Symptom	Cause	Fix
Teacher cannot open any exam screen	No assignments, no homeroom, no committee	Participant access needs an active teacher assignment, a homeroom class, or Examination committee membership. Add the assignment in the Configure step of /timetable.
Setter or marker sees no task	Not assigned on the paper	Assign the setter or marker on the paper at /exam-papers; they then appear at /exam-papers/my-setter-tasks and /exam-papers/my-marking-tasks.
Family gets 403 on a hall ticket that staff can download	Schedule not published yet	Coordinators bypass both the paper status and the session publish date. Verify as a parent before concluding it works.
Marks changed but the published result did not	Publishing froze the marks	Publishing sets a freeze on every published paper. Revoke with the unfreeze option, correct, then publish again.

Common questions

Quick answers in plain language.

Publishing results is refused with "Class teacher sign-off required". Can that be overridden?+

No, and that is deliberate. Missing marks can be waived by acknowledging incomplete marks on the publish call, but the class teacher sign-off check has no override at all. The response lists the classes still waiting, and each homeroom teacher has to sign off before the session will publish.

Who is allowed to publish or revoke exam results?+

The caller must be able to coordinate exams, which means Platform Admin, the office Admin role, Principal, Vice Principal, or a member of the Examination committee. On top of that, when the session is governed by a committee, only the chair of that committee may publish or revoke. Strict mode is on unless EXAM_STRICT_RBAC is set to the string false.

A student has extra time recorded but it is not on the hall ticket. What is wrong?+

Accommodations are read from the student record at /students/{id}/accommodations, and only rows that are active and whose effective dates overlap the exam session are printed. An accommodation added after the session ended, or one whose effective-to date falls before the session starts, is skipped. Note also that seating generation ignores accommodations entirely - it only takes rooms, rows, columns, and an optional shuffle - so a seat still has to be moved by hand.

Why can a student not raise a revaluation request?+

Three gates, in order. The session results must be published, otherwise the request is refused outright. If an appeals deadline was set at publish time and has passed, the request is refused with "The appeals window is closed." Finally the paper must actually have marks recorded for that student. Requests are raised from /exam-revaluation.