Moodle - Fail Grade Quiz Access Rule (quizaccess_failgrade)

Description

Restricts further quiz attempts once a user reaches the quiz's "grade to pass", using whichever grading method the quiz is already configured with (highest grade, average, first attempt, last attempt). Works out of the box: no extra settings to configure, no separate grade field - it reuses the "Grade to pass" the quiz already has.

Compatibility note: if your site resets courses periodically for retraining (e.g. Moodle's own "Reset course", or a tool like local_recompletion) without clearing old quiz grades, this plugin may keep blocking reattempts after a reset - see Known limitations for the current workaround and status.

Known limitations

Course/user resets ("Reset course", recompletion, etc.)

This plugin decides whether to block a new attempt using two things: the user's previous attempts on the quiz, and their current grade in the gradebook. It has no notion of "training cycles" - so if another tool resets a user's completion/attempts for retraining purposes but leaves their old quiz attempts and/or gradebook grade in place, this plugin can keep blocking new attempts, thinking the user is reattempting a quiz they already passed.

This has been reported in practice with local_recompletion: by default it preserves attempt/grade history (sensible for compliance/audit trails), and its per-course "Delete grade data" option is off unless explicitly enabled. If your site resets courses for periodic/annual retraining and you don't want a passed quiz to permanently block reattempts after a reset:

• Moodle's native "Reset course": already safe with the default options. "Remove all quiz attempts" is checked by default, and when it runs, mod_quiz also clears the quiz's gradebook grade as part of the same step - regardless of whether the general "Remove all course grades" option was selected. The issue can only resurface here if "Remove all quiz attempts" is deliberately unchecked while resetting a course for some other reason.
• local_recompletion workaround today: in the course's recompletion settings, enable both "Quiz attempts: Delete" and "Delete grade data" - unlike the native reset above, these are fully independent here, and skipping "Delete grade data" leaves the old grade in place. Note this removes the old grade from the live gradebook (it's still recoverable via Moodle's "Grade history" report, just not visible in the normal grade views) - not ideal if you need the old pass/fail visible as a compliance record.
• In progress: automatic detection of course resets (both Moodle's native "Reset course" and local_recompletion) is being worked on, so a reset can be recognised without needing to delete any grade/attempt history. Track progress via the GitHub issues.

Starting a new attempt while a previous one is pending manual grading

Quizzes that rely on manually-graded question types (e.g. Essay) can leave an attempt in a "needs grading" state for a while after it's submitted. Today, this plugin only looks at the grade already recorded in the gradebook - so as long as that grade isn't there yet (or isn't a passing one), a new attempt can still be started even though a previous attempt is still awaiting a human grade.

Status: a fix that blocks new attempts while a previous one is pending manual grading is in progress - track progress via the GitHub issues.

Requirements

• Moodle 3.9 (2020060900) through Moodle 5.2, tested via CI against every stable branch in that range (see .github/workflows/main.yml).

Installation

Please refer to the official documentation: Installing Plugins

Development

Please, use GitHub for issues.

Contributing code or translations

If you'd like to contribute a fix, a new feature, or a translation, a pull request is strongly preferred over attaching a file to an issue (e.g. a zip with translated strings). A PR shows exactly what changed, runs through CI automatically, and is much easier to review and merge than a file someone has to download and apply by hand. If you're not comfortable with git/GitHub, opening an issue with the file attached is still welcome - it just takes longer to get merged.

Reporting a bug

To help diagnose the issue, please include:

• Moodle version (Site administration → General → Version)
• PHP version and database (MySQL/MariaDB/Postgres) and its version
• Plugin version (see version.php's release, e.g. vX.Y.Z, or the exact commit if installed from git)
• Quiz settings relevant to the issue: grading method, "grade to pass", number of attempts allowed
• Steps to reproduce, and what you expected to happen vs. what actually happened
• Any relevant error message, or entry from the Moodle/PHP error log

Reports without this context are usually much harder to act on, so including it up front saves a round trip.

Packaging a release for moodle.org

The Moodle plugins directory takes a zip upload rather than linking directly to this repo, so a release needs to be packaged first. .gitattributes marks the files that don't belong in that zip (CI config, this README's own dev-only docs) via export-ignore, so git archive produces a clean package on its own - no manual exclude flags to keep in sync:

ref=$(git describe --tags --exact-match 2>/dev/null || git rev-parse --short HEAD)
git archive --format=zip --prefix=failgrade/ "$ref" -o "quizaccess_failgrade-${ref}.zip"

Run this after checking out (or tagging) the exact commit to release. It picks up the tag pointing at the current commit automatically (falling back to the short commit hash if there isn't one yet) and uses it both as the archive ref and in the output filename, so there's nothing to edit by hand. --prefix=failgrade/ wraps the contents in a single top-level folder named after the plugin's install path (mod/quiz/accessrule/failgrade), matching what moodle.org expects. tests/ is intentionally still included - useful for anyone installing from the zip who wants to run the suite locally.

Status / Roadmap

• Publish plugin on GitHub

• Submit to Moodle Plugins directory

• GDPR

• Unit tests

• Behat tests

• Translate to other languages - handled via AMOS, Moodle's official translation tool. Since this plugin is published on the Moodle Plugins directory, lang/en/ strings are imported there automatically for community translation, and approved translations are bundled into the moodle.org download - no translation files are kept in this repo (see "Contributing code or translations" above)

Changelog

Notable milestones, not an exhaustive version-by-version history (see the GitHub releases / moodle.org versions for that):

• 2020-07 - v1.0 - Initial release.
• 2023-09 - v1.1.0 - Added support for "Average" as a grading method. It was disabled from the first release onwards (the settings form hid the option entirely for quizzes graded this way) - there was no logical reason it couldn't work, it just hadn't been tested yet. A dedicated test (test_grade_average()) now covers it. An earlier attempt at this had tried computing the average over all attempts allowed on the quiz, not just the ones taken so far - a paradox for a rule meant to stop attempts early, since a passing average could only ever be confirmed once every attempt had already been used. That approach was abandoned in favour of averaging the attempts made so far (the same thing the quiz's own "Average grade" already shows the user).
• 2026-07 - v1.4.0 - Extended official support through Moodle 5.2. Also fixed a class_alias() collision with other quizaccess_* plugins doing the same Moodle 4.2+ compatibility trick with the same generic names (see Known limitations for the kind of thing that keeps coming up in this area).

Credits

Originally based on:

• Reattempt Checker - a quiz access rule https://moodle.org/plugins/quizaccess_reattemptchecker
• Pass grade quiz access rule https://moodle.org/plugins/quizaccess_passgrade

License

Licensed under the GNU GPL License