The short answer
You are not the marker. You are responsible for the calendar, the conditions, the record and the escalation — making sure assessments are written on time, under fair conditions, and that someone is told early when something goes wrong.
Parents new to home education tend to assume one of two extremes: that they must mark everything, or that the school handles all of it and they need do nothing. Neither is right, and the gap between them is where assessment years go wrong.
For how assessment works at Saving Grace — what is set, when, and how it is submitted — read how assessments, tests and exams work first. This article is about your part.
The calendar is yours
Self-paced learning has a flexible pace and a fixed assessment calendar. That combination catches families out every single year: the work drifts, the deadline does not.
- Put every assessment date into whatever calendar your household actually uses, at the start of the term.
- Work backwards from each one. If an assessment needs three weeks of preparation, the reminder goes three weeks earlier, not the night before.
- Check submission actually happened. “I submitted it” and “it uploaded” are not the same claim, and the difference is only visible afterwards.
The conditions are yours
For a formal assessment, your job is to make the conditions fair — a quiet space, the permitted materials and no others, the specified time, and no help. That includes help you would not think of as help: rephrasing a question, confirming that an answer looks right, or the sympathetic hovering that tells a child they are on the wrong track.
This can feel unkind in the moment. It is not. A mark produced with quiet assistance is worse than a low mark honestly earned, because it hides the exact information the school needs to place and support your child.
The record is yours
Keep what your child produces, organised by term and subject, whether or not anyone has asked for it. It costs almost nothing while the year is running and is close to impossible to reconstruct afterwards.
You will need it if a mark is queried, if a portfolio is requested, if you apply for a concession, or if your child moves between programmes or back into a school. See what goes into a School-Based Assessment portfolio.
The escalation is yours
You are the only person who can see the difference between a hard week and a real problem. Nobody else is watching your child work.
Raise it early — with the teacher in Canvas for anything about the work itself, and with the office for anything about access, deadlines or arrangements. “We are three weeks behind and losing ground” is a solvable problem in week three and a much harder one in week ten.
What is not yours
Marking formal assessments, moderating marks, setting the standard, or deciding whether your child has passed. Those belong to the school and, for the FET Phase, to the examining body. If you find yourself doing them, something has gone wrong — ask.
This article explains how assessment works in general. It was written in August 2026 and is reviewed every six months. For the current position — dates, fees, availability and anything specific to your child — see assessments, or ask in the forums and a member of the team will confirm.