New Grading Scheme Features in Microsoft Entra Education: What Admins Need to Know Now

WHAT JUST CHANGED

Microsoft began rolling out several enhancements to the Education resources in Entra ID (Microsoft Graph) as of June 2024. These are now in General Availability (GA) for all tenants with Education licenses:

• New educationGradingScheme and educationGradingSchemeGrade resources.
• Added languageTag property to educationAssignment, supporting localization.
• New gradingScheme relationship on educationAssignment.
• New defaultGradingScheme and gradingSchemes relationships on educationAssignmentSettings.
• New API methods to set default grading schemes and assign grading schemes to assignments.

Who’s Affected:

• Education tenants (including Microsoft 365 Education subscriptions)
• Global admins, School admins, Education app developers
• Tenants using Microsoft Graph for assignment workflows, grading automation, or custom classroom apps

WHAT’S NEXT ON THE ROADMAP

Microsoft is accelerating improvements in Education APIs as part of its broader push for richer LMS and SIS integration:

• Assignment lifecycle automation (bulk assignment creation, updates, deletion via Graph)
• External user collaboration (B2B guest teacher/student support, currently in preview for select tenants)
• Expanded localization (multi-language grading rubrics, planned for late 2024)
• Advanced analytics (assignment completion, grading trends, and student progress reporting)
• Licensing simplification (Education licensing for Entra and Graph is expected to shift to per-user, not per-school, in coming quarters—watch for roadmap announcements)

Admins should begin planning for:

• Automated compliance reporting (grading scheme auditing)
• Bulk onboarding/offboarding of educators and students as external users
• Localization audits and language tagging for assignments

WHY THIS DIRECTION IS BETTER

The new grading scheme features directly address longstanding gaps in Microsoft Education APIs:

• Granular Grading Control: Prior API versions forced admins to use fixed grading rubrics, limiting flexibility. Now, custom grading schemes and grades can be defined per assignment or tenant.
• Localization: The languageTag property enables true multi-language assignment support—critical for multinational schools or diverse classrooms. Competitors like Google Classroom still lack robust API-based language tagging.
• Assignment Settings Consistency: Default and custom grading schemes can be set at the assignment settings level, reducing manual admin overhead and errors.
• API Coverage: All grading scheme changes are now fully auditable and modifiable via Microsoft.Graph, supporting automation, reporting, and integration with third-party LMS platforms.

Compared to the previous model, which often required manual grading management or static rubrics, this update provides flexibility and compliance alignment—especially for districts needing to meet local education standards or accessibility requirements.

ADJACENT ENTRA ID CHANGES TO KNOW

• Conditional Access for Education Apps: Recent CA policy changes now support fine-grained controls for Education workloads, allowing risk-based MFA and device compliance checks for teacher portals.
• External User Lifecycle Improvements: B2B guest lifecycle (invite, remove, audit) is now smoother for Education tenants, with new PowerShell support in the Microsoft.Graph module.
• Education Licensing in Entra Admin Center: Licensing assignment and reporting is now surfaced in Entra Admin Center under Licenses > All products > Education.

WHAT TO DO: STEP-BY-STEP FOR ADMINS

1. Audit Existing Assignments and Grading Schemes: Use Microsoft.Graph PowerShell to report on current grading scheme usage and localization.
2. Review Assignment Settings: Identify assignments lacking grading schemes or language tags.
3. Plan for External User Access: Audit guest users and conditional access policies for Education apps.
4. Verify Licensing: Check that Education licenses are correctly assigned and report on gaps.

CHECK IT YOURSELF: PowerShell Audit

Use the Microsoft.Graph module for Education resources. The following script reports all assignments in your tenant, their grading scheme, and language tags. It paginates and handles errors. No changes are made.

# Requires: Microsoft.Graph (>= 1.19.0)
# Connect to Graph
Connect-MgGraph -Scopes 'EduAssignments.Read.All','EduAssignments.ReadWrite.All'

# Get all assignments across all classes, report grading scheme & languageTag
$classes = @()
try {
  $classes = Get-MgEducationClass -All
} catch {
  Write-Warning "Error retrieving education classes: $_"
}

foreach ($class in $classes) {
  $assignments = @()
  try {
    $assignments = Get-MgEducationClassAssignment -EducationClassId $class.Id -All
  } catch {
    Write-Warning "Error retrieving assignments for class $($class.DisplayName): $_"
    continue
  }

  foreach ($assignment in $assignments) {
    $gradingScheme = $null
    try {
      $gradingScheme = Get-MgEducationAssignmentGradingScheme -EducationClassId $class.Id -EducationAssignmentId $assignment.Id
    } catch {
      Write-Warning "Assignment $($assignment.DisplayName) has no grading scheme."
    }
    Write-Output "Class: $($class.DisplayName) | Assignment: $($assignment.DisplayName) | Language: $($assignment.LanguageTag) | GradingScheme: $($gradingScheme.DisplayName)"
  }
}

PORTAL PATH

• Assignments: Entra Admin Center > Education > Classes > Assignments
• Assignment Settings: Entra Admin Center > Education > Assignment Settings
• Licensing: Entra Admin Center > Licenses > All products > Education
• External Users: Entra Admin Center > Identity > External Identities > Guest users

BOTTOM LINE

• Prioritize auditing and updating assignment grading schemes and language tags for compliance and localization.
• Start planning for bulk assignment lifecycle automation as APIs expand.
• Ensure Education licenses are correctly assigned and conditional access policies are reviewed for classroom apps.
• Keep your Education workflows aligned with Microsoft’s roadmap—monitor preview features for external user collaboration and localization.