Transmutation of Grades: A Guide for Teachers

One important change that has been included in the K-12 Program which a lot of teachers are still trying to grasp is the way grades are reflected on the report card. Under the new grading scheme, the passing grade is reduced to 60% from the traditionally used 75% mark. While this is easy to understand, the problem is that teachers are tasked to give a mark of 75 when the student gets a computed grade of 60. While DepEd on its related memoranda have not cited the exact benefit regarding this scheme, one plausible explanation is that it is to avoid parents from complaining if their child gets a mark that is below 60 on their report card. It is also helpful in order to provide students the ability to cope with a failure from the previous quarter. This process of shifting the passing grade is something most teachers are not yet able to grasp completely. Transmutation of grade is not actually difficult. You need not to repeatedly rely on a transmutation table just to compute the grades of all your students. Here is a quick guide to the math behind the transmutation of grade.

What is Grade Transmutation?

Transmutation of Grades is an essential part of the K-12 Program of the Department of Education of the Philippines. Under this, student’s academic standing is reflected on a 60-100 scheme on their report card (60 is the lowest possible grade and 100 is the highest possible grade; descriptive marks are also given) while a 0-100 grading scheme is actually applied in the classroom with 60% as the passing mark. The process involves shifting of the Actual Grade (the one computed based on the student’s academic performance) to the Transmuted Grade.

What is a Transmutation Table?

A transmutation table contains the range of the Actual Grades and their equivalences of Transmuted Grades. The transmutation table below converts the passing rate of 60% to its equivalent grade of 75. The range for the Actual grade is 0-100 while the range for the transmuted grade is 60-100.

Is there a formula to convert Actual Grade to Transmuted Grade?

The answer is a big YES. You can actually compute the transmuted grade using the formula below.

In excel, you can do this with the help of some built-in functions.

=FLOOR(IF(A1<60,60+(A1/4),75+(A1-60)/1.6),1)

Where,

A1 is the address of the Actual Grade.

ISNUMBER checks whether the cell reference contains a number (TRUE) or not (FALSE).

FLOOR rounds down the number to the nearest integer.

IF checks whether a condition is satisfied. Executes the second argument if TRUE or the third argument if FALSE.

Does this formula work? How did we arrive with the formula?

Yes, it does work. You can actually try and check if it does work. We arrived with the formula by following the steps below.

•          Determine the range of the AG (Actual Grade). That is L_AG (Lowest Actual Grade) and H_AG (Highest Actual Grade).
•         Determine the range of the TG (Transmuted Grade). That is L_TG (Lowest Transmuted Grade) and H_TG (Highest Transmuted Grade).
•         Determine the Actual Passing Grade (P­_AG) and the Transmuted Passing Grade (P_TG).

·         The general formula of transmutation can then be used.

For our case,

•         The Actual Grade (AG) range is 0-100. So, L_AG=0 and H_AG=100.
•          The Transmuted Grade (TG) range is 60-100. So, L_TG=60 and H_TG=100.
•          The Actual Passing Grade is 60 and the Transmuted Passing Grade is 75. So, P_AG=60 and P_TG=75.
•          We also want to round down to the nearest integer.

Does the general formula work on all cases of transmutation of scores?

Yes, it does. There might be times when you need to tweak it a little bit in order for it to do what you want it to do.

Okay, I have gone through the guide and somehow understand the mechanism of how it works. What else can you offer me?

Well, I have for you a really nice excel file which contains a sheet where you can input grades and have it transmuted. It can also generates you the formula and you just copy and paste it to your excel workbooks where you want to transmute grades. Aside from this, it also creates the transmutation table for you based on your given input. You can print it and have it anytime specially if you don’t have your own computer or simply don’t trust them.

Download the file: Transmutation.xls | Transmutation.xlsx. 

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