Publishing your first term reports

From assessment definitions to publishing reports to families - the full flow.

12 min readUpdated 18 April 2026By the Lectern team

Term reports in Lectern are generated, reviewed, and published in three stages: compose → review → publish. The whole flow takes a school of ~500 learners about a day from start to parents’ inboxes - once you’ve done it once.

Before you start

  • Confirm every assessment for the term has marks recorded for every learner (or has been explicitly excused). Lectern blocks publication if marks are missing.
  • Lock attendance for the term - Admin → Attendance → Lock term. Reports include attendance figures; locking prevents accidental late edits.
  • Decide whether you’re using the default report template or a customized one (customizing templates).

1. Compose

Open the term-report run

Admin → Academic Performance → Results, then click New report run. Pick the term and the grade levels you’re reporting on.

Lectern composes the reports

Lectern pulls assessments, applies your grading scale, computes aggregates, and assembles a draft report per learner. This usually takes 30 seconds to two minutes depending on size.

Review the run summary

The summary flags learners with incomplete data. Click any to see what’s missing and fix at source - then click Recompute.

2. Review

Teachers review their own classes’ reports first. Each teacher sees a list under Teaching → Results with reports awaiting their review, sorted by class.

For each learner, teachers can:

  • Add subject-specific comments
  • Override aggregates if there’s a documented reason
  • Flag for principal review (the report won’t publish until a principal signs off)

Principal sign-off

Once teachers have reviewed, the principal does a final pass under Admin → Academic Performance → Results → Pending review. Bulk-approve a class once you’re happy.

3. Publish

Final preview

Click Preview as parent on a sample report. This shows exactly what the parent will see in their email and on their dashboard.

Schedule or publish now

You can publish immediately or schedule for a specific date and time. Most schools schedule for end-of-day on the last term day, giving teachers a final morning to catch any errors.

Confirm

On confirmation, Lectern emails parents, posts a notification on their dashboard, and writes a permanent audit-log entry. Reports remain accessible to families forever (subject to your tenant’s retention settings).

Amendments

If you spot an error after publication, issue an amended report: Admin → Results → <learner> → Issue amendment. Amendments include a clear note explaining what changed. Both the original and amended versions remain in the learner’s history.

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