Setting homework and marking what comes back

An assignment is written against one class, with a title, instructions, a type and a due date. Saving it as a draft is the normal first move — a task half-written is not a task a class should be reading.

Drafts are private to staff, and that is decided when the record is read rather than by hiding a row in the interface. A student portal asking for the class list is given only work that has actually been set.

• Title, instructions, class, type and due date.
• Drafts and scheduled work are visible to teachers and leadership only.
• Editing stays available after publication — a correction to the instructions does not require a new assignment.

Publishing is what makes an assignment exist for a class. Until then it counts for nobody: it is not in a student's list, not in a family's, and not in any completion figure.

Scheduling exists so that work written on Sunday evening does not arrive on Sunday evening. A scheduled task carries a release time and becomes assigned when that time passes, and Release now publishes it ahead of schedule without rewriting the date.

A student submits written work, a file, or both — an image, PDF, audio or video attachment alongside the text. Audio matters more than it looks: it is often the only practical way for a younger child to hand in an interview or a reading.

A submission can be withdrawn and replaced while the assignment is open, which is deliberate. A child who attached the wrong photo should not need a teacher to intervene.

Marking happens against a submission rather than against the assignment, so a class part-way through is a normal state rather than a blocked one. A score and written feedback can be left together or separately — feedback with no number is a legitimate outcome for plenty of work.

A submission that has not been marked reads as pending, and the To-review tab is the queue. Nothing moves out of it on a timer.

Families read their own child's work: what was set, what was handed in, and the mark and feedback once a teacher has left them. Unmarked work says it is unmarked rather than showing a placeholder score.

There is no separate publication step for a family. A mark is visible to the child and the family together, which is the honest arrangement — a grade a student has seen is not a secret from home.

Closing ends submission. The assignment stays visible to the class and to families, along with whatever was handed in and marked — closing is not archiving, and nothing disappears from a student's record.

A student who submitted nothing before closing has submitted nothing. That gap is left as a gap rather than being filled with a zero, because the two mean different things and only a teacher knows which applies.