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Manage Students at Year End

Promote Grade Levels

At the end of the year, you can promote the students who are ready to move to the next grade.

CAUTION: If you already ran the Automatic Grade Promotion during the Remove/Advance process, you do not need to run this process.

There are a few things you need to do to promote grade levels.

Back up your data

  1. On the File menu in your PDS program, click Backup / Restore / Archive > Backup Data.
  2. Click Backup Data.
  3. Enter a reason for the backup, such as "Backup before promoting grade levels".
  4. Select a backup method, and enter or select any relevant information.
  5. Click Start Backup.
  6. After your data is backed up, you can print the backup information for your reference.

Print the final versions of this year's reports

Once you run this process, only the new year's information displays. Print any reports you may need with this year's information.

Watch & Learn

Learn to print student progress report cards. 4 min 49 sec

It may take a minute for the video to display. To watch in full screen mode, click the expand icon in the video player.

To watch more videos, visit the PDS Video Library.

Promote grade levels

Note: Before you start, review the Grades and Degrees keywords to ensure you have each grade you plan to promote in numeric order. On the File menu in your PDS program, click Keywords. Under General Keywords, click Grades and Degrees.
  1. On the Information tab, click Students > Processes then, on the Formation Processes tab, click Grade Promotion.
  2. Select which grade field to promote, then click Next. Formation grade displays on the Student Detail window, and school grade shows on the Personal window.
  3. If you ran this process last year and typically select the same options for a new year, you can click Use Values from: <date> to pull those values from last time. You'll have a chance to review and make changes before processing the data. Once the values display, you can skip to the last step of these instructions.
    Note: This feature relies on data from the last time you ran the process using version 11.1 B or higher. So, the button will not display unless you've run the process at least once after updating to 11.1 B.
  4. Select the range of grade levels to promote. Typically, you begin with your first grade level (Preschool or Kindergarten) and end with the last grade level you promote to.
  5. To change the type for graduating students, select the checkbox. If you change type, you can also change the relationship.
    Note: Type and relationship display in the Personal section. This is a way to distinguish between students who've completed grade 12 and those currently in grade 12.
    CAUTION: If you share data with another Office program: Grade promotions change all shared records, including Church students, even if they aren't in Formation. If you change the student status type here, the type on their Church records will also be updated.
  6. Select to include only active, only inactive, or all students.
  7. Verify the promotion information in the grid, and click Next.
  8. The students who fit your criteria display. By default, all records are selected. Clear the checkbox for any student(s) you don't want to promote.
  9. Before you apply any updates, you can modify information in the list if needed.
    • To override a student's promotion grade, select the new grade in the column. For example, if a 2nd grader is skipping to Grade 4, you can change the New Grade from the default 3 to 4.
    • Change member type by selecting a new type. You may change older students to Young Adult.
  10. After verifying the list of students marked for promotion, click Next.
  11. To promote students and update the Church and/or Formation Office databases, click Promote Students.

example of the grade promotion process

Church_Office
Formation_Office

Last updated: November 4, 2024