Free rubric templates
Three rubric templates, and how to pick the right one
Blank, ready to copy or print, and free. An analytic rubric for marking criterion by criterion, a holistic one for a single judgement, and a single-point one for when feedback matters more than the number.
Pick the shape that fits your assessment, then read the honest part at the bottom: the table is the easy half.
Template 1 — the default
Analytic rubric: criteria, weights, levels
Break the work into the things you're actually assessing, describe each level for each criterion, and weight them. Slower to build and slower to mark — and the one that holds up when a student comes to argue about a mark, because you can point at the row.
Use it when the mark carries feedback, more than one person is marking, or the assessment is worth a large share of the grade.
| Criterion | Weight | Excellent (4) | Good (3) | Adequate (2) | Not yet (1) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Criterion 1 | 30% | What this level looks like | What this level looks like | What this level looks like | What this level looks like |
| Criterion 2 | 30% | What this level looks like | What this level looks like | What this level looks like | What this level looks like |
| Criterion 3 | 25% | What this level looks like | What this level looks like | What this level looks like | What this level looks like |
| Criterion 4 | 15% | What this level looks like | What this level looks like | What this level looks like | What this level looks like |
| Total | 100% | Final mark | |||
Four criteria and four levels is a common starting point, not a rule. Keep the weights adding to 100%.
Template 2 — the fast one
Holistic rubric: one judgement, one mark
One description per level, covering the whole piece. You read the submission, decide which description fits best, and that's the mark. One judgement per student instead of five — on a large cohort, that difference is hours.
Use it when the whole is genuinely more than the sum of its parts — a performance, a design, a piece of creative writing — or the stakes are low and speed wins.
| Level | Mark band | What work at this level looks like |
|---|---|---|
| Excellent | 85–100% | Describe the whole piece at this level — argument, evidence, structure, accuracy |
| Good | 70–84% | Describe the whole piece at this level — argument, evidence, structure, accuracy |
| Adequate | 50–69% | Describe the whole piece at this level — argument, evidence, structure, accuracy |
| Not yet | Below 50% | Describe the whole piece at this level — argument, evidence, structure, accuracy |
Anchor the bands to your institution's passing grade, not to a generic 0–100 split.
Template 3 — the one nobody shows you
Single-point rubric: the standard in the middle
Only the standard is written in advance — one column, describing what meeting it looks like. You write in the margins: where this student fell short, where they went beyond.
Use it whenyou want students to read the feedback rather than the number, on drafts and formative work, or when a levels grid keeps flattening the work you care about. The trade-off is honest: it's far more writing per student, so it doesn't scale to a cohort of 200.
| Where it fell short | The standard | Where it went beyond |
|---|---|---|
| Feedback for this student | Criterion 1 What meeting the standard looks like | Feedback for this student |
| Feedback for this student | Criterion 2 What meeting the standard looks like | Feedback for this student |
| Feedback for this student | Criterion 3 What meeting the standard looks like | Feedback for this student |
| Feedback for this student | Criterion 4 What meeting the standard looks like | Feedback for this student |
Choosing
Which one do I need?
| If this is true | Use |
|---|---|
| Students will use the feedback on later work | Analytic |
| More than one person is marking | Analytic |
| The grade is likely to be challenged | Analytic |
| Large cohort, low stakes, speed matters | Holistic |
| The work is a performance or a creative piece | Holistic |
| It's a draft, and the conversation matters more than the mark | Single-point |
For most university assessment the honest answer is analytic. More on the trade-off in holistic vs analytic rubrics.
What a blank template can't do for you
The table above took a minute to copy. The work starts now, and it's the part nobody hands you: writing, for every criterion and every level, a description specific enough to be worth having.
"Excellent: excellent analysis" is a rubric in shape only. The real version says what excellent analysis looks like in this assessment, in words a tired marker at eleven at night applies the same way they did at nine. That's an evening per assessment — which is why so many rubrics never get past the four labels.
A generic template can't write those descriptions, because it has never seen your assessment.
See one with the descriptions written
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