After the second pass is complete, the Official Mark calculator employs a level of validation to ensure that if an existing Official Mark for a student is higher than a newly calculated mark, that the existing mark is persisted. A detriment is defined as a lower net credit allocation or a lower mark value. An assessment is also made as to whether the “trigger” or Process starter that prompted the recalculation of marks is in fact related to the mark being validated. The goal of Official Mark validation is to ensure new calculations never detriment the student and only “related” process starters initiate a new mark to be written.

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Official Mark Validation determines which Official Marks to persist based on the following steps:

1. Check to see if the newly calculated mark is exactly the same as the existing Official Mark
   • If so, no mark updates are written and the “Calculated On” field attached on the record is updated to reflect that the calculator was triggered.
2. Ensure that the Official Mark that is being considered is related to the “Process Starter” that triggered calculation.
   • If there is no relationship, the calculated Official Mark is discarded and stored.
3. If the calculated mark is related and does not match the current Official mark, both records credit and mark values are compared.
   • If there is no detriment, the newly calculated mark replaces the existing Official Mark
4. If there is a detriment to the student, the validator will only accept the new (lower mark) if one of the selected marks used to calculate the existing Official Mark was updated.
   • If there is an invalid detriment, the calculated Official Mark is discarded and stored.

Validation of Official Marks does not take into consideration the revocation of Retroactive Credits (considered to be a detriment) due to a student passing a once failed (attempted) course or passing the course for which RAC was assessed. The net credit result is neutral.

There are instances where an Official Mark that was a product of Data Conversion has no selected records. When the calculator is triggered, it calculates no Official Mark. The final check to see if existing selected marks have been updated will prove false and will ensure that existing Official Marks with no selected marks are not deleted when comparing existing and newly calculated marks

The following table details when the Official Mark should be updated and what type of update should occur. The column “Difference” describes how the calculated Official Mark set compares to the current Official Mark set. The calculated Official Mark set is the set of Official Marks that were generated through the calculator infrastructure, but have not yet been stored. The current Official Mark set is the set of Official Marks that are currently stored for the student.