Before you become a Penn Foster student, or now you may be a new student at Penn Foster, surely there are a lot of things that you ask. One of them is about the Penn Foster exam alert. You want to know this because you may be afraid that you will skip the exam.
Exam Alert at Penn Foster
An exam can be taken at the end of each lesson. You are able to complete your exam online through the website of Penn Foster. After you pass your exam, then you are able to go to the next lesson. There is also a proctored exam. It is required at the end of each semester in a college degree program. The length of a proctored exam is almost one hour. When the students are doing their examinations, they are required to take between two and four proctored exams on various subjects at the end of semester.You will be helped by the education department of Penn Foster to make local arrangements.
There is the first exam that you will take in Penn Foster namely Starting Your Program test. What is it? It is a short exam which is meant to help students to understand their Student POrtal further and get them used to how online exams work.
If you are a college student, before you go to your degree, you have two skills exams that you have to pass before you get to your first coure. A Basic Reading and Basic Math Assessment test need to be completed to make sure that you are all set for college-level classes.
Grading System at Penn Foster
- Grading System at Penn Foster Career School
Your examinations and projects at career school will be graded on the scale as you can see in the table below.
| Lesson Grade (%) | Letter Equivalent | Rating |
| 90 – 100 | A | Excellent |
| 80 – 89 | B | Good |
| 70 – 79 | C | Average |
| 65 – 69 | D | Passing |
| Below 65 | F | Failing |
To graduate and get your diploma, an overall program average of 65% or above is needed.
- Grading System at Penn Foster College
At Penn Foster, a number-letter system of grading is used. In this system, number grades are assigned to examinations and letter grades are assigned to completed courses. The letter grade for each course will be calculated. It is done by calculating the average of the lesson examination grades as two-thirds of the course grade and the proctored examination grade as one-third. Letter grades are changed to quality points for the purpose of computing the Quality Point Average (QPA) for each semester and the cumulative Quality Point Average for more than one semester. Quality points are from 4.0 for an A grade to 0.0 for an F grade.
In the Penn Foster College, your examinations and projects will be graded as below.
| Lesson Grade (%) | Letter Equivalent | Rating | Quality Point Avg. |
| 90 – 100 | A | Excellent | 4.0 |
| 80 – 89 | B | Good | 3.0 |
| 70 – 79 | C | Average | 2.0 |
| Below 70 | F | Failing | 0.0 |
For your information, you need to pass all courses and your cumulative Quality Point Average (QPA) must be 2.0 or higher in all studies so that you can graduate and get your associate of bachelor’s degree.
- Grading System at Penn Foster High School
You will have to take an exam, at the end of each lesson. Your exam can be taken online via the website of Penn Foster. After passing the exam, then you can continue to the next lesson. There will be new course material which will follow as you complete your exams. So, you will always have books and learning materials to be able to continue moving forward.
Here is how your examinations and projects are graded in Penn Foster High School.
| Lesson Grade (%) | Letter Equivalent | Rating |
| 90 – 100 | A | Excellent |
| 80 – 89 | B | Good |
| 70 – 79 | C | Average |
| 65 – 69 | D | Passing |
| Below 65 | F | Failing |
It is important for you to know that if you want to earn your High School Diploma, you are required to have an overall course grade of 65% or above in each subject and successful completion of 21.5 credits.
- Grading system at Penn Foster Workforce Development-Custom
| Lesson Grade (%) | Letter Equivalent | Rating |
| 90 – 100 | A | Excellent |
| 80 – 89 | B | Good |
| 70 – 79 | C | Average |
| Below 70 | F | Failing |
How Proctored Exams Work
According to a post by Dara Warn on Penn Foster blog about the integrity of Online Proctoring, starting in 2014, online proctoring was started to be introduced by Penn Foster as an additional option to a face to face proctor. Then, there have been thousands of remote proctored exams which have taken on the systems of Penn Foster. From these remote proctored exams, less than 1% of proctored events flagged for infractions which means that this exam condition makes students unlikely to cheat.
The student is given strict guidelines about what they are able to do and they are not able to do to simulate a traditional test-making environment. The students are also given rules about what they are permitted to bring into the room and when they are permitted to leave. Through a webcam, the student is recorded while the testing system controls what the student sees on their screen. Students also have to show their license or ID to the webcam as additional identity verification. The recordings will be audited by the remote proctoring platform after the fact, and it will contact Penn Foster with any reports of infractions.
How about students who cannot take remote proctoring? They will have to use paper proctored exams. The student will need to find a person who meets the requirements to proctor the exam and then Penn Foster will verify the person. Through an ongoing programmatic roll-out, Penn Foster goes on working to change all exams to the remote proctor option.
In the Student Handbook, students are also given information about academic integrity, plagiarism and remote proctor FAQ. In addition, they are informed about the policies and rules of Penn Foster, expectations and the full set of instructions for remote proctoring so they are aware about these.
