Building a Simple Student Grade Management System with PHP

Managing student grades is an important part of any school or learning environment. Teachers often need a simple tool to record grades, check performance, and quickly see who is passing or failing. That’s why I built a Student Grade Management System — a lightweight web app created using PHP, sessions, and JSON files.

In this blog, I’ll walk you through what the system does, how it works, and why it’s a great starter project for anyone learning PHP.

Why This Project?

When learning PHP, many beginners jump straight into big frameworks like Laravel. But before that, it’s useful to build something small that covers the basics:

• User login/logout with sessions
• Protecting pages from unauthorized access
• Form validation and data storage
• Filtering, searching, and showing statistics

This project ticks all those boxes in a simple, easy-to-understand way.

Features of the System

Here’s what the Student Grade Management System can do:

✅ Login/Logout System – Only teachers (admin) can access protected pages.
✅ Add Student Records – Enter full name, student ID, subject, and grade.
✅ Validation – Grades must be between 0 and 100 to keep the data clean.
✅ View Records – Browse all students in a neat table with search and filter options.
✅ Pass/Fail Status – Automatically shows if a student passed (green) or failed (red).
✅ Summary Statistics – Average, highest, and lowest grades at a glance.
✅ Mini Bar Chart – Simple CSS-based chart showing grade percentage.

How It Works

1. Login with Sessions

The system uses PHP’s $_SESSION to remember if a user is logged in. Without a session, protected pages like Add or View redirect back to the login page. This keeps student records secure.

2. Adding Students

Teachers can fill in a form with student details. PHP validates the input, then saves the record into a grades.json file. Using JSON makes the project lightweight — no database setup required.

3. Viewing & Filtering

All student records are displayed in a table. You can:

• Search by student name (partial matches allowed).
• Filter by subject.
• Instantly see who is passing or failing.

The table also includes a tiny bar chart showing grade percentage — quick visual feedback without heavy chart libraries.

4. Summary Stats

At the bottom, the system calculates and displays:

• Average grade
• Highest grade
• Lowest grade

This helps teachers get an overview of class performance in seconds.

Why This Project Is Useful

This isn’t just a demo — it’s a practical mini-app. Teachers could actually use it for small classes, and learners can explore it to understand PHP basics. It’s also a great portfolio project if you’re new to web development, because it demonstrates:

• Authentication (login/logout)
• Data management (CRUD basics with JSON)
• Validation and error handling
• Simple visualization with CSS

Next Steps & Improvements

This system is a good foundation, but it can be expanded. Here are a few ideas:

• Replace JSON with a database (MySQL) for larger data.
• Add user roles (admin, teacher, student).
• Export reports to PDF or Excel.
• Add graphs using Chart.js for richer visualization.

Final Thoughts

The Student Grade Management System is proof that even with just PHP and JSON, you can build a useful and secure web app. It’s simple, practical, and teaches you the fundamentals of web development.

If you’re learning PHP, I recommend trying this project yourself — tweak it, improve it, and make it your own!

Check the code out on my Github Page
https://github.com/CoderWithCuriosity/student_grade_management