Why can the Head of Department not mark or approve assessments?

This article explains why Heads of Departments cannot mark or approve assessments without proper setup and permissions. It outlines the steps to ensure departments are set up correctly and details the necessary permissions required for Heads of Departments to edit and approve assessment marks.

Step 1 - Check your Departments

For Data Collections, you can set approvals to be done by Heads of Departments.

To make sure they are then able to approve, make sure you have set up Departments. Go to School > School > Structure - if there are no departments or missing departments here you'll need to set them up.

Step 2 - Check their access

Being the Head of a Department won't automatically give staff the ability to edit assessment marks of students in their department. They'll need to be given additional permissions to allow them to input or approve assessment marks. You'll need to either:

• Add them as the academic lead for the courses they should be able to edit - you can see how to do this here: Academic Leads
• Give them additional permissions

Here are the two main permissions you'd need to give a Head of Department:

• Assessment: Administer All Students - Edit, add and delete Assessment marks, baselines and targets for all students.
• School: Assessments: Approver - Approve Assessment data collections for all students. 

If staff need access to other areas, you can check what permission is needed from School > Users & Security > Permissions, then assign the relevant permission by following these instructions. For example, they'll need the Attendance: Administer All Students permission to input and edit attendance marks for all students.