How to Calculate Homeschool GPA

How to caluclate homeschool GPA. It's an area where homeschool parents everywhere get anxious at the thought of trying to do their child's transcript because they fear calculating the GPA. 

Updating your child's homeschool transcript need to happen yearly. You'll include all of the finished classes from the most recent year. When you update the transcript, you'll need to recalculate the grade point average, as well. Here's where your pulse starts racing, your hands start sweating, and you forget all of the math that you've ever known how to do. Don't panic. I'll give you a brief review about how to calculate homeschool GPA:

Besides GPA, there is a lot to learn about high school grades, credits, and transcripts. Let me teach you in this free class. Click to register: A Homeschool Parent's Guide to Grades, Credits, and Transcripts Webinar

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First things first - calculating high school credits 

No need for a scary-sounding boot camp involving sweat and tremendous effort while the Drill Sergeant is screaming at you. Instead, think of calculating homeschool credits as more like getting a massage or eating chocolate. It feels like "Ahhhhhh! That's better!" Let me take away that worry from you. You'll feel more confident about homeschooling once you figure out the little trick to doing it easily!

You can measure credits by the book or by homeschool curriculum. One textbook is one high school credit. One semester class is a half credit. If you don't use pre-measured homeschool curriculum, you can measure credits by estimating hours. One credit = 120-180 hours, or about 1 hour a day. One half credit = 60-90 hours, or about half an hour per day.

You can give high school credits for high school level work at any age. For instance, your middle-school child could earn credit in Algebra 1 or higher, high school level biology or higher, and foreign language if you use a high school curriculum. Children can earn high school credit if they do college level work at any age. And they can get credit based on demonstrated expertise – e.g., their work is published or they perform in an adult orchestra.

You can also give high school credit for work completed at high school age, even if your child is behind in a subject area. A public school would give credit for any class they attend, even remedial classes, and you can, too.

Now, for calculating the homeschool GPA 

 It really can be an easy task. Like calculating your student's high school credits, calculating your student's homeschool GPA can be a calm experience instead of one that is anxiety inducing. Simply follow these easy steps to calculate homeschool GPA.

• Assign each class a credit value.
• Assign each class a numerical grade.
• Multiply each class credit by its numerical grade. That gives you the grade point for that particular class.
• Add all the grade points for all the classes that are complete.
• Divide the total grade points by the number of credits completed.
• The answer is the current grade point average.

That's it. That's really all there is to it! Now, wasn't that easier than you anticipated? If you need more help making your child's homeschool transcript, read my article How to Make a Homeschool Transcript.

Sometimes it helps to look at an example. Here's an example of one of Lee's transcripts.

Every school in the nation may have their own way to calculate GPA, or weight classes. As an independent homeschooler, you get to determine your own policy on calculating grades. I encourage you to do it the easy way. A different method won't give a dramatically different GPA, and so choosing the simple method of how to calculate homeschool GPA makes the most sense and, it will save your sanity and keep you from making a required task into a full blown panic attack. Happy record keeping!