About

About This Portfolio Management System

This Portfolio Management System is a secure, web-based educational platform for managing student portfolios, evidence submission, curriculum assessment, examinations, quality assurance, and training. It is operated by Darren Bassett (peelprofessional.uk) and serves students, tutors, assessors, and administrators within structured learning programmes.

What the System Does

The platform provides an integrated environment where students can submit evidence mapped to curriculum criteria, sit online examinations, take part in public safety training assessments, and communicate with their tutors and assessors. Staff have access to structured assessment and quality assurance workflows, sampling tools, and reporting dashboards. Administrators have full control over users, cohorts, programmes, and system security.

Key Features by Role

Students

• Enrol in portfolios and curriculum programmes aligned to your learning pathway
• Submit evidence (documents, images, video, and text) mapped to specific curriculum criteria
• Track your progress and submission status through a personal dashboard
• Sit online examinations with timed interfaces, question flagging, and progressive answer saving
• View exam results and review graded attempts with feedback
• Participate in PPST (Public and Personal Safety Training) assessments
• Maintain a reflective learning diary
• Communicate with your tutor and assessor via the built-in private messenger
• Submit and track grade appeals through a structured appeals workflow
• Manage your GDPR rights: export your personal data or request account deletion
• Check in to attendance registers via the web or mobile

Tutors and Assessors

• Review and grade student evidence submissions with structured written feedback
• Mark exam attempts, including question-by-question and bulk grading
• Monitor live exam progress with real-time attempt tracking
• Conduct Internal Quality Assurance (IQA) and External Quality Assurance (EQA) reviews of assessments and curriculum evidence
• Run and manage PPST training courses, including tablet-optimised real-time assessment capture
• Access cohort-level reporting, attendance registers, and engagement analytics
• Manage student logs and observation records
• Communicate with students via the integrated messaging system
• Process grade appeals at tutor, IQA, EQA, and Head of Department levels

Administrators and Programme Managers

• Manage users, cohorts, departments, and learning programmes
• Configure portfolio, curriculum, exam, and PPST templates and assign them to cohorts
• Set up and manage QA sampling strategies with cohort and department-level overrides
• Monitor all system activity through comprehensive, tamper-evident audit logs
• Manage GDPR compliance: consent records, data subject requests, breach reports, and retention policies
• Schedule encrypted database backups, verify integrity, and restore from backup when needed
• Manage email templates, notification settings, and queued email delivery
• Generate and export reports across performance, attendance, engagement, and assessment dimensions
• Monitor system health, security alerts, blocked IPs, and cron job execution
• Manage file security including ClamAV antivirus integration, AES-256-GCM file encryption, and quarantine workflows

Core Feature Areas

• Portfolio and Curriculum — Evidence submission mapped to criteria, with a full assessor review workflow (draft → submitted → under review → approved/revision requested)
• Examination System — Reusable question banks, timed exam templates, live exam monitoring, manual grading, and attempt history
• PPST Training — Course, group, and member management with a tablet-optimised real-time assessment interface and multi-format export (Excel, CSV, PDF, SCORM, certificates)
• Quality Assurance — IQA and EQA review workflows at both evidence and template level, with configurable automated sampling and override management
• Grade Appeals — Multi-stage appeals process from student submission through tutor, IQA, EQA, and Head of Department review
• Reporting and Analytics — A unified report builder with student performance, exam performance, attendance, engagement, and curriculum mastery reports, exportable to Excel, CSV, and PDF
• Attendance — Register management with web and mobile check-in, bulk enrolment, and attendance reporting
• Messaging — One-to-one and group messaging with online presence indicators and unread counts
• Plagiarism and AI Detection — Automated similarity checking and AI content detection for submitted work
• GDPR Tools — Data export, deletion request workflow, breach reporting, consent management, and configurable retention policies
• Backup and Restore — Scheduled encrypted backups with integrity verification, multi-destination support, and a full restore workflow

Security

• Passwords stored using bcrypt hashing — never in plain text
• Optional Two-Factor Authentication (TOTP) for all accounts, with recovery codes
• Passkey / WebAuthn support for passwordless authentication
• Rate-limited login with IP-based brute-force detection and Cloudflare Turnstile bot protection
• Role-based access control with over 100 granular permissions across 9 user roles
• CSRF token protection on all forms; PDO prepared statements throughout
• All uploaded files scanned for viruses and malware (ClamAV / VirusTotal)
• Files encrypted at rest using AES-256-GCM with key rotation support
• Comprehensive, tamper-evident audit logging of all user actions
• Session-based authentication with HttpOnly and SameSite=Strict cookies
• Encrypted database backups with a configurable retention schedule

User Roles

The system supports nine roles with hierarchical permissions: System Administrator, Super Administrator, Portfolio Manager, Course Manager, Assessor, Tutor, Student, Internal Quality Assurer (IQA), and External Quality Assurer (EQA). Access is strictly limited to the functions each role requires.

Technology

Built on PHP 8.3, MySQL, and modern JavaScript using a custom MVC architecture with no framework dependency. Libraries include PHPMailer (email), Chart.js (visualisation), TCPDF and PHPSpreadsheet (document and spreadsheet export), Monolog (logging), and WebAuthn libraries for passkey support. File uploads are validated by MIME type and scanned using ClamAV or VirusTotal where configured.

Contact

For questions about the system, contact: contact@peelprofessional.uk