Filtering an MS Access report to show students who failed most recent exam plus 1 previous exam

Question

I am trying to use the same MS Access report but have it be filtered to only present names of students matching certain criteria. The different filters will be made into separately titled reports for easier access.

Our school defines 69 or below as a failing exam score.

If the score for the most recent exam is at or below 69 AND the student has scored at or below 69 on any ONE previous exam, the student needs to show up in the At Risk Report.

If the score for the student's most recent exam is at or below 69 AND the student has scored at or below 69 on any TWO previous exams, they need to show up in the Academic Board Report.

How would I code this? Would I enter it on the filter settings in my query, or somewhere else?

Current database design:

Exam Dates table: ExamCode, ExamDate

Exam Scores table: ExamCode, StudentID, Book, Version, Score

Students table: StudentID, StudentName

Exams query: ExamCode, ExamDate, StudentID, StudentName, Book, Version, Score

At Risk report: Header grouping current (most recent) exam date, columns showing StudentName, StudentID, and the Book, Version, and Score of the two exams that put them into the At Risk category. Sorted by book and then by StudentID.

Academic Board report: Same as above except showing three exams putting them into the Academic Board category.

Answer 1

You could start by creating a query that selects the students that had insufficient for the last exam, with a count on how many they failed in total, and which was their first exam that they failed:

SELECT      StudentID,
            Count(*) AS FailCount,
            Max(ExamCode) AS LastExamCode,
            Min(ExamCode) AS FirstExamCode
FROM        [Exam Scores]
WHERE       Score <= 69
GROUP BY    StudentID
HAVING      Max(ExamCode) = (SELECT Max(ExamCode) FROM [Exam Dates])

Save the above SQL as a query with name FailingStudents From this query you could then take the records with FailCount = 2 for the first report, and = 3 for the second.

For the first report you will also have out-of-the-box the codes of the two exams concerned. With that you can retrieve the Book, Version and Score by joining [Exam Scores] again for each of them.

For the second report it is bit more tricky: you have 2 out of the three exam codes, but you can join [Exam Scores] for the middle one by requiring that its ExamCode is between (and not equal to) the two extremes.

Here is an SQL for the first report, using the query made above:

SELECT      Students.StudentName,
            Students.StudentID,
            FirstFail.ExamCode,
            FirstFail.Book,
            FirstFail.Version,
            FirstFail.Score,
            LastFail.ExamCode,
            LastFail.Book,
            LastFail.Version,
            LastFail.Score
FROM        (((FailingStudents
INNER JOIN  Students
        ON  Students.StudentID = FailingStudents.StudentID)
INNER JOIN  [Exam Scores] LastFail
        ON  LastFail.ExamCode = FailingStudents.LastExamCode
        AND LastFail.StudentID = FailingStudents.StudentID)
INNER JOIN  [Exam Scores] FirstFail
        ON  FirstFail.ExamCode = FailingStudents.FirstExamCode
        AND FirstFail.StudentID = FailingStudents.StudentID)
WHERE       FailingStudents.FailCount = 2;

Note however, that with the data you provided in comments, there are no matching records.

The second report could be based on an extension of the previous SQL, like this:

SELECT      Students.StudentName,
            Students.StudentID,
            FirstFail.ExamCode,
            FirstFail.Book,
            FirstFail.Version,
            FirstFail.Score,
            SecondFail.ExamCode,
            SecondFail.Book,
            SecondFail.Version,
            SecondFail.Score,
            LastFail.ExamCode,
            LastFail.Book,
            LastFail.Version,
            LastFail.Score
FROM        ((((FailingStudents
INNER JOIN  Students
        ON  Students.StudentID = FailingStudents.StudentID)
INNER JOIN  [Exam Scores] LastFail
        ON  LastFail.ExamCode = FailingStudents.LastExamCode
        AND LastFail.StudentID = FailingStudents.StudentID)
INNER JOIN  [Exam Scores] FirstFail
        ON  FirstFail.ExamCode = FailingStudents.FirstExamCode
        AND FirstFail.StudentID = FailingStudents.StudentID)
INNER JOIN  [Exam Scores] SecondFail
        ON  SecondFail.ExamCode < FailingStudents.LastExamCode
        AND SecondFail.ExamCode > FailingStudents.FirstExamCode
        AND SecondFail.StudentID = FailingStudents.StudentID)
WHERE       FailingStudents.FailCount = 3;

Note the extra JOIN and the 3 at the end. This query returns two instances based on the data you provided: You can see this in this fiddle, which is based on MySQL, but it is the same principle.