Everything you need to know about using RankForge
RankForge is a browser-based tool that reads Sentral academic report PDFs and turns them into ranked, sortable tables. It extracts each student's subject scores or ranks, calculates averages, and produces a leaderboard — all without any manual data entry.
For Years 7–10 it also supports maths class grouping, Gifted & Talented class detection, a top-30 list, and z-score based percentage comparison across subjects.
RankForge is designed for the Sentral Summary Report, generated with Group by Student selected. Each student's subjects must appear together as a block, followed by their scores or ranks.
If your PDF came from a different report type or grouping setting, the parser may miss students or subjects. Use the Debug — raw extracted text panel at the bottom of the results page to inspect exactly what text was extracted.
The search key is the label that appears just before a student's score in the PDF — for example Overall Assessment Rank or Assessment Mark. RankForge scans each line for this label to extract the number after it.
If some subjects use different wording (e.g. one subject uses Assessment Rank while all others use Overall Assessment Rank), add the alternative as Key 2, Key 3, or Key 4. All non-empty keys are checked on every line.
No. Use the ↻ Re-parse with current settings button in the results toolbar. It re-runs the full parse on the same file using whatever settings are currently selected — year group, score mode, and all search keys — without needing to re-upload.
Yes. RankForge is a fully client-side application. Your PDF is opened and processed entirely within your own browser — no data is uploaded to any server at any point.
The only network requests the page makes are to load Google Fonts (for typography) and the PDF.js library itself from a CDN. Neither request carries any student data. You can confirm this in your browser's Network tab (F12) while uploading a file.
No. RankForge does not use cookies, localStorage, or any form of persistent storage. Every session starts completely fresh. Once you close the tab, all parsed data, student names, and results are gone.
Your settings (year group, score mode, search keys) are also not saved — you will need to re-enter them on each use.
No. Because everything runs locally in your browser and nothing is transmitted or stored, there is no mechanism by which anyone else could access your results. The data exists only on your screen, in your browser's memory, for the duration of your session.
If you export a CSV using the export buttons, that file is saved to your local device — treat it with the same care as the original PDF.
RankForge makes no outbound requests carrying student data, so network-level monitoring or filtering at the school level will not intercept anything sensitive. The tool is suitable for use on school networks and managed devices.
If your school has a policy against using browser-based tools with student data, check with your IT or privacy officer regardless of the technical safeguards — policy compliance is separate from technical safety.
Rank mode extracts X/Y ranks (e.g. 17/61) and sorts students by their lowest average rank across subjects. A lower rank number is better.
Percentage mode extracts percentage marks (e.g. 86%) and compares students using z-scores — a statistical measure of how far above or below the cohort average each student scored in each subject. This accounts for the fact that different subjects have different average marks, making cross-subject comparison fairer.
In Percentage mode, you can apply a multiplier to each subject's z-score before calculating a student's average. This lets you give more weight to subjects you consider harder or more important.
After adjusting weights, click Apply weights & re-rank to recalculate. The leaderboard will show the weighted average z-score, and hovering over a score reveals the unweighted value.
In Percentage mode: green means the student scored 80% or above in that subject; red means below 50%.
In Rank mode: green means the student ranked in the top 25% of their cohort for that subject; red means they ranked in the bottom 25%.
Junior maths classes (detected by the class code pattern YYMMAn, e.g. 10MMA1) are grouped separately from other subjects. By default all detected maths codes are placed in Group 1.
You can drag class codes between groups to reflect your school's ability groupings (e.g. Advanced, Standard, Foundation), rename each group by clicking its title, and add or remove groups as needed. Each group then appears as a separate column in the tables and can receive its own difficulty weight.
Click Apply grouping & re-render after making changes to update the tables.
RankForge detects G&T classes automatically based on the class code suffix. Codes ending in T, X, TR, or TG are treated as G&T.
For example, a student in 10ENGT1 will have their English result listed as English (G&T) as a separate subject column from standard English. This means G&T and non-G&T students are ranked within their own group for that subject, and you can apply independent difficulty weights to each.
G&T detection only applies to Years 7–10. It is automatically disabled for Years 11 and 12.
For Years 7–10, a dedicated Top 30 table shows the 30 highest-ranked students with a gold/amber highlight. These students are also highlighted in the main leaderboard. The top 30 is based on whichever scoring method is active (rank average or weighted z-score).
The most common causes are:
12ENG1) is year-specific. Make sure the Year Group setting matches your PDF.SIT10216 Certificate I Hospitality) require the class code to come at the end of the line in the standard format.The Debug panel (at the bottom of the results page) shows the raw text extracted from the PDF, which is the best place to diagnose parsing issues.
RankForge is designed to handle this. When multiple instances of the search key appear on the same line — such as Median Assessment Mark: 69% Assessment Mark: 86% — the parser ignores any occurrence where the key is preceded by another word (like "Median"). It will always extract the standalone match.
If you notice that all students show the same score for a particular subject, that's a sign the median is being captured instead of the individual mark. In that case, check the Debug panel and adjust your search key to be more specific.
Two CSV exports are available — Export scores CSV (all students, all subjects in raw scores) and Export leaderboard CSV (students ranked by average). Make sure you're using the right one for your purpose.
If maths grouping is active, the CSV will use the group names (e.g. Maths: Advanced) rather than individual class codes. Students whose maths code isn't assigned to a group will appear with no maths column entry.
Open the CSV in a spreadsheet application — some applications may need you to specify UTF-8 encoding if names with special characters appear garbled.
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