Guides
Making school documents that work on paper
Question papers, worksheets, notices and mark sheets are read under time pressure and printed on tired machines. These are notes on getting them right, written for the person who has to set the paper by Friday.
- Question papers
- Worksheets
- Formatting
- Printing
- School admin
Writing an assignment brief that answers the questions before they are asked
Deadline, length, format and marking criteria on one page, and the ambiguities that generate a week of emails.
5 min readSplitting a paper into sections, and when not to
Sections help students budget time and hurt when they fragment a short paper. How to decide, and how to set the section line.
4 min readSchool adminMark sheets and result tables that stay readable across pages
Repeating headers, column order, alignment of numbers, and the row banding that stops the eye slipping a line.
5 min readSchool adminLaying out a certificate that looks earned rather than generated
Optical centring, the name as the largest element, and the borders and effects that make a certificate look cheap.
4 min readQuestion papersReusing last year’s paper without reusing last year’s questions
Keep the structure, replace the content: how to build a paper bank that saves real time without the questions leaking.
4 min readQuestion papersA proofreading pass that catches what reading the paper does not
Five separate checks, each looking at one thing, because reading the whole paper carefully finds fewer errors than five quick targeted passes.
5 min readSchool adminWriting a school notice that gets read from two metres away
The five things a notice must answer, the size it has to be set at, and the common layout that hides the date.
4 min readPrintingPrinting a class set without wasting an hour and a ream
Test one, count properly, and the double-sided settings that cause the reprint everybody has done once.
5 min readFormattingWhy your Word document looks different on the school computer
Font substitution, printer drivers and hidden styles, and how to move a document between machines without it reflowing.
5 min readFormattingQuestion numbering that does not break when you reorder the paper
Continuous numbering, sub-part conventions, and why manual numbers always drift by the third draft.
4 min readFormattingChoosing a typeface that survives the school photocopier
Why thin, fashionable fonts fail on a fortieth-generation copy, and which sizes and faces hold up in practice.
5 min readFormattingMargins and page setup for documents that will be stapled and copied
A4 margins that survive the staple, the photocopier edge and the school printer, with the numbers to start from.
5 min readWorksheetsHow much answer space to leave, by mark value
A working table for ruled lines and blank blocks, and why too much space is a worse problem than it looks.
4 min readWorksheetsDesigning a worksheet primary students can work through alone
Line length, instruction placement, working space and the visual grouping that lets a seven-year-old start without asking what to do.
6 min readQuestion papersWriting the general instructions block students will actually read
Why the instructions get skipped, and how to write eight lines that survive being skimmed in ten seconds.
5 min readQuestion papersDistributing marks across a paper without the totals drifting
A method for planning weightage by topic and difficulty before you write a single question, and the arithmetic check that catches the usual mistake.
6 min readQuestion papersHow to format a question paper that reads clearly under exam pressure
The header block, the instructions, the section breaks and the mark column, and what each one is actually for.
7 min read