If you're running a house competition where houses have different numbers of students, raw points alone can be misleading. A house with 80 students will naturally earn more points than a house with 50, even if the smaller house's students are more engaged.
The Balanced Score fixes this by adjusting for house size, so every house competes on equal footing.
👤 Who can turn this on: Admins and Site Leaders. Once enabled, everyone (Admins, Site Leaders, and Teachers) sees balanced scores on the Overview and Competition Dashboard.
When to use Balanced Scoring
Turn it on if:
Your houses have noticeably different student counts (e.g., 80 in one house and 120 in another)
You want smaller houses to have a fair shot at winning
Your houses are built from grade levels or rosters of unequal size
Leave it off if:
All houses have roughly the same number of students
You want the raw, unweighted total (e.g., "most points wins")
How to turn it on
Go to House Points > Settings.
Find Balanced House Scoring under Competition Settings.
Toggle it on.
Once enabled, balanced scores are used automatically across the app.
Where you'll see it once it's on
Competition Dashboard: the "live" standings shown on hallway TVs now display balanced scores.
Overview screen: the chart and House cards show balanced scores.
Houses > Fairness tab: shows a side-by-side breakdown of Raw Points, Balanced Score, and Avg Points/Student for every house.
Teachers award points the same way as always - the scoring engine handles the math behind the scenes.
The three numbers, explained
Raw Points Earned is exactly what it sounds like: the total points your house has earned. No adjustments.
Avg Points/Student is Raw Points ÷ Total Students. It tells you how engaged your house is per student, and it's the truest apples-to-apples comparison across houses because it isn't affected by size.
Balanced Score takes that per-student average and scales it back up using the average house size across your school. The result still looks like a points total (so it feels like a scoreboard), but larger houses don't win just by having more kids.
The formulas
Fairness Factor = Average House Size ÷ This House's Size Balanced
Balanced Score = Raw Points × Fairness Factor
Avg Points/Student = Raw Points ÷ Total Students
Smaller houses get a boost (Fairness Factor above 1).
Larger houses get a modest penalty (Fairness Factor below 1).
If your house is exactly average size, your Balanced Score equals your Raw Points.
An example
Let's say a school has four houses:
House | Students | Raw Points |
Red | 50 | 6,000 |
Blue | 40 | 5,200 |
Green | 60 | 6,900 |
Yellow | 50 | 5,400 |
Total students: 200. Average house size: 50.
Now calculate each column:
House | Students | Raw Points | Fairness Factor | Balanced Score | Avg Pts/Student |
Red | 50 | 6,000 | 1.00× | 6,000 | 120.0 |
Blue | 40 | 5,200 | 1.25× | 6,500 | 130.0 |
Green | 60 | 6,900 | 0.83× | 5,750 | 115.0 |
Yellow | 50 | 5,400 | 1.00× | 5,400 | 108.0 |
Notice what happened:
Green earned the most raw points (6,900) but came in last on Balanced Score. With more students, more points are expected.
Blue earned fewer raw points than Green but wins the Balanced Score, because their students are the most engaged (130 points each on average).
Red and Yellow are average size, so their Fairness Factor is 1.00×, and their Balanced Score equals their Raw Points.
This is the whole point of the Balanced Score: it rewards engagement, not headcount.
A common question
"If I divide the Balanced Score by Total Students, why doesn't it equal Avg Points/Student?"
Good catch. It doesn't, and it shouldn't. Here's why:
Avg Points/Student uses Raw Points ÷ Students. It's the real per-student average.
Balanced Score already has the size adjustment baked in. Dividing it by students again would apply that adjustment twice.
For Blue in the example above:
Correct: 5,200 ÷ 40 = 130.0 ✓
Not correct: 6,500 ÷ 40 = 162.5 ✗
Think of Balanced Score and Avg Points/Student as two views of the same underlying performance: one scaled to look like a scoreboard, one shown as a clean per-student number. They're not meant to divide into each other.
Quick reference
Want to see who earned the most points overall? Look at Raw Points.
Want to see which house is most engaged per student? Look at Avg Points/Student.
Want a fair scoreboard that accounts for different house sizes? Look at Balanced Score.