Run exams without the April panic. Schedule, mark, verify, publish — one signed-off workflow.

Multi-component subjects, real boards, real shapes

A Class 10 CBSE Science paper has Theory (80) + Practical (20). A Class 10 ICSE English Language paper has Section A (40) + Section B (40) + 20% Internal Assessment. A Class 9 IGCSE Mathematics has Paper 1 + Paper 3 + Coursework. An IB MYP unit closes with a four-criterion rubric, each on a 1-8 scale. The Maharashtra State Board Class 10 has internal 20 marks per subject, written 80 marks per subject, plus a separate Physical Education and SUPW assessment.

Inkwelly models all of these correctly out of the box. There is no 'forced 100' field anywhere in the system. The school configures components once per board affiliation, and every exam created against that affiliation inherits the right shape — saving the office hours of repeated data entry and removing the entire class of 'why does my Class 10 Science marksheet show 100 instead of 80+20?' bug.

Best-of-N components, grace marks, partial marks — the boring details that decide a child's promotion

The difference between a school that can correctly publish a result and a school that gets one parent meeting per published result lies in details that no marketing site usually mentions. Inkwelly does — because we have built every one of them.

Best-of-N — Class 11/12 in many schools have three Unit Tests; only the best two count. Inkwelly's isBestOf and bestOfCount flags on a component pick the best automatically, and the marksheet shows '(Best 2 of 3)' in the column header.

Grace marks — borderline cases at 32/100 (CBSE pass at 33) get a one-mark adjustment on principal's discretion. Inkwelly stores grace separately from marksObtained, with a reason field that flows into the audit log.

Partial marks and outOfAttempts — when a child writes the paper twice (re-test), the system tracks attempts, picks the policy-defined value (best, latest, average) and shows the chosen one on the marksheet with a footnote.

Absent flag — a child marked ABSENT on the seating plan auto-flows to ABSENT on the marks entry sheet — never silently 0.

Verification — the queue that prevents post-publish parent meetings

The most expensive minute in any Indian school's calendar is the one between 'marks entered' and 'marksheet published'. Inkwelly turns that minute into a queue. After every subject's marks entry deadline closes, the entry is locked and the row moves to VERIFICATION. The class teacher and exam coordinator see a single screen with every paper that needs review.

The queue is not blank — it is annotated. Inkwelly auto-flags outliers (a Class 6 paper where 19 students score 95+ when last term's average was 72), missing students (the seating plan said 32 children sat the paper, marks entered for 30), percentage mismatches between the component sum and the total, and components left unfilled past deadline. Every flag has a one-click 'send back to MARKS_ENTRY' option that emails the subject teacher with the specific reason and the original deadline reference.

Nothing reaches APPROVED until the queue is empty. The principal does not have to read 412 mark sheets — she has to read the four flagged ones. Verification turns from a heroic exercise into a 20-minute meeting.

Co-scholastic Part 2 — the section CBSE schools always get wrong

CBSE Part 2 (Co-scholastic) is the part of the marksheet that most schools fill in at 11 PM the night before result day, because the regular ERP forgot to model it. Work Education, Art Education, Health and Physical Education, Discipline — each on a 5-point grade with descriptors from CBSE's Circular 39/2018, plus class-teacher remarks that should not be a single paragraph for every child.

Inkwelly Co-scholastic is configured once per session, separate from scholastic marks, with its own grading scale, its own component set, its own teacher-assignment per class, and its own deadline. The PT teacher enters HPE grades for Class 6-10 in one screen. The Art teacher enters AE grades. Class teacher enters discipline and finalises remarks. The marksheet template renders Part 2 in the prescribed CBSE layout, with the descriptor next to the grade so the parent reads 'Outstanding — initiates and leads activities' instead of just 'A'.

Four-perspective competency observations — beyond marks

NEP 2020 and CBSE's holistic progress card require schools to capture a child's competencies — critical thinking, collaboration, communication, creativity, citizenship — from multiple perspectives, not just the teacher's. Inkwelly's competency observations module captures four assessments per competency: teacher (subject and class teacher), self (the child rates themselves), peer (a structured peer-review window) and parent (a 5-question form sent on WhatsApp on result eve).

The four ratings are stored per-competency-per-child-per-term and flow into a competency annex on the report card — a small, honest visual that says 'across four lenses, this child looks like X'. Self-rating is a teaching tool by itself; peer rating builds the social-emotional profile; parent rating closes the home-school loop. The system does not average the four ratings into one score (which would defeat the purpose); it shows all four side-by-side, with a small disagreement flag where the four diverge meaningfully.

Admit cards, seating plans and exam centers — the day-of-paper machinery

For any exam beyond the smallest unit test, the day-of-paper logistics sink hours of office time. Inkwelly Examinations comes with a Centers, Rooms and Allocations layer that knows how many children sit in each room, how the seating plan should rotate roll numbers (no two consecutive students from the same class), which invigilator is assigned to which room, and what the map of the building looks like.

Admit cards are generated from the same data — one PDF booklet per class, one card per child, with the school logo, photo, roll number, school code, the per-paper time and room. The whole booklet exports to a single PDF the office can print on a Friday and hand to class teachers in 20 minutes.

For schools that hold board pre-board mock exams as official affiliation-recognised events, the Centers layer also handles inter-school venues — your school can host another school's children, the seating plan accommodates both, and the admit cards are stamped with both school codes.

Marksheet design templates — board-aware, school-branded, QR-verified

The marksheet is the only thing the parent ever sees from your exam process. Most school ERPs ship one generic template and force the school to live with it. Inkwelly Marksheet Design lets the school create as many design templates as it needs — CBSE Class 1-5, CBSE Class 6-8, CBSE Class 9-10 with Part 2, ICSE Class 10 with SUPW, ISC Class 12, IGCSE, IB MYP, custom State Board layouts — each with its own school letterhead, board logo, principal signature, class teacher remark slot and a QR code.

The QR resolves to a verified copy stored on the parent app and (for the schools that opt in) DigiLocker. A parent in Bahraich can verify a marksheet posted on a WhatsApp group is the same one Inkwelly issued — no Photoshop screenshots, no claim disputes during admission interviews. For schools running languages with multiple scripts (Hindi, Urdu, Tamil), the template can render the student name in both scripts side-by-side using the localised name from the Student Information Module.

Multiple grading scales per session — A1-E2, 9-1, 1-7, Distinction/A/B

A single school in 2026 frequently runs two grading scales in the same session — A1-E2 for Class 9-12 (CBSE), letter grades for the foundational stage Class 1-2, percentages for State Board Class 11/12, 9-1 for the IGCSE Cambridge stream, 1-7 for the IB MYP stream. Inkwelly stores grading scales as first-class entities — each with a name, a slug, a band list and a passing threshold — and an exam picks one when it is created.

Per-subject overrides handle the language papers, the elective subjects and the bridging cases. Class 10 Sanskrit may need a different pass threshold from Class 10 English because of the language committee's circular. Inkwelly handles that with a gradingScaleOverrideId on the subject config — no fork of the parent scale, no '95% on Sanskrit shows D2' bug, no manual marksheet patching.

Term weightage — FA1 + FA2 + SA1 + SA2 with one rule, applied everywhere

The annual aggregate report card on most boards is not 'an average of the marks'. It is a weighted aggregate — Formative Assessment 1 + Formative Assessment 2 + Summative Assessment 1 + Summative Assessment 2 — with weights that may be 10/10/30/50 for some boards, 20/20/30/30 for others, or fully custom for State Boards.

Inkwelly stores the weightage on the Academic Term and the Examination row. Each exam has a weightagePercentage field. The system aggregates correctly at session-end without anyone running an Excel formula. If the school changes the weightage mid-session (which happens — every September the board issues a circular), the change is logged and the recalculation runs in the background; no marksheet is silently re-issued.

Result publish — WhatsApp, parent app, SMS, with one un-publish guard

The last 30 minutes before result day are the most dangerous in the entire exam process. Inkwelly's PUBLISHED stage requires three confirmations — the principal's sign-off, the class teacher's class-list match, and the result publish date check. Once confirmed, the system fires three channels — WhatsApp Business message with the marksheet PDF as attachment, parent-app push with the QR-verified copy, and SMS with the percentage and the parent-app deep-link.

If a mistake is caught after publish (it happens — a wrong subject mapping for one child), Inkwelly's un-publish is not a delete. It is a tracked transition that creates a 're-print queue' entry. The original is invalidated server-side; the parent app shows a small banner — 'A corrected marksheet is being prepared' — instead of silently disappearing the wrong one. The corrected marksheet is published the same way, with both copies visible in the parent app's audit timeline.

For the Principal

She needs three answers from her phone in 30 seconds — what is the class × subject heatmap, what is the topper podium for the school, and which exams are at risk of missing the result publish date. Inkwelly's stats dashboard is built for this — the heatmap is the hero visual, the podium is a single card, the at-risk list is one alert. She walks into the staff-room coffee queue with the Class 8 maths concern already in mind, and the maths HOD knows it.

For the Exam Coordinator

She runs the lifecycle. Inkwelly gives her a single Kanban-style board with the eight stages as columns and every paper as a card she can drag (within the valid-transition rules). Marks entry deadlines are visible on every card. She can send any paper back to MARKS_ENTRY with a reason; the subject teacher is notified instantly. She has the audit log of every transition open in a side drawer — the trustees ask, she has the answer in 5 seconds.

For the Class Teacher

She is the verification gate. Inkwelly's verification screen for her class shows every subject's marks against the seating-plan attendance, every flagged outlier, every missing student, every late-component. She sees only her class — never another teacher's data. Her sign-off moves the bundle to APPROVED. After publish, she sees parent confirmations as they happen and can re-print individually if a parent reports a typo on the address field — without invalidating the marks.

For the Subject Teacher

She sits in the staff-room with 38 answer scripts and a phone. Inkwelly's marks entry screen is mobile-first — Hindi/English/regional UI, per-student per-component, grace marks toggle, absent toggle, pass-status live as she types. The deadline is visible at the top. The screen freezes the moment the deadline lands; she cannot accidentally edit at 11:58 PM. She submits, the screen confirms, the next paper she opens is queued for the same window.

From Excel

Most State Board schools and CBSE Class 1-5 schools run exams on Excel. Inkwelly imports the last two sessions' result Excel files (one per class, one per term) into the historical results table. The CSV uploader detects column headers, maps to subjects and components, asks once about Best-of-N, and writes the historical aggregate to each student's profile. Old marksheets are not regenerated; the original PDFs are linked to the student profile for parent download. New exams from session N onwards are full-stack Inkwelly.

From a generic school ERP

Fedena, Entab, Schoolmint, MasterSoft, BeBeAxis — every Indian school ERP has a marks export. Inkwelly's importer reads the most common eight formats. The key choice for the office is whether to bring forward the old grading scales as-is (preserving historical authenticity) or to map them to new Inkwelly scales (cleaner reports). Both are supported; we recommend the first for SDM/RTI authenticity.

From paper

The smallest pre-primary and primary schools, particularly in semi-urban Tier-3 towns, still run exams on paper marks registers. Inkwelly's intake form uploads scanned marks registers, applies basic OCR for marks columns, asks the principal to verify the imported data, and writes to history. The first session on Inkwelly itself is then run in MARKS_ENTRY-first mode — no migration of pending exams, only forward.

Onboarding timeline — what the first 21 days look like

Days 1-3: school setup, board affiliation, grading scales, academic terms. Days 4-7: subject component templates per class, marksheet design template selection. Days 8-14: import historical results, student profile linking, parent app rollout. Days 15-21: first practice exam in DRAFT, first SCHEDULED exam, sample marksheet to staff, go-live confirmation. After day 21, the school runs full exams on Inkwelly with the original consultant on a 30-day standby.