To wonder why a school seems unable to give me an accurate end of term report?

[ParanoidSurreyHousewife]

Ds1 moved school in January to Year 5 of the prep department of an independent school. Yeargroup of 40 most of whom will move up to the senior school in Year 7 to be joined by another 60 odd from other schools.

Had a parents evening 2 weeks before the end of last term. One teacher who takes both History and French said that for his report card he would be classified as 2nd quartile for History, and that his French was excellent.

When the report card came home it showed 4th quartile for History and 3rd quartile for French, both out of line with all of his other subjects which were 1st or 2nd quartile. I dropped the teacher an email on the last day of term, and she has just called back. Apparently there was a formula error on the report spreadsheet for French, and he should have been 1st quartile, and for History she had input the result of his end of term assessment test incorrectly so he should have been the 3rd quartile.

Now to be honest I'm not overly concerned about his actual result in Year 5 History or French, but I am perplexed that for History he now has an assessment which neither fits the discussion at parents evening nor the written report (which is being reprinted apparently!).

To avoid drip feeding, the prep school seems to have had an unlucky term last term whereby they had to get rid of their Science teacher abruptly (difficulties over his original application form), the English teacher had an accident and broke her arm and shoulder in 26 places, and the maths teacher was seriously ill and off school for over half a term. The substitute maths teacher was then involved in a biking accident, breaking her nose and losing her front teeth, and so ds1 ended up with 5 different maths teachers over the course of the term as well as 2 English teachers and 3 science teachers. Ill fortune can strike at any time, but I was upset not to have been notified of the absence of the maths teacher in particular (we did get some brief notification about the other 2). Eventually I managed to get hold of ds1's assessment papers for Maths, and going through them with the director of studies it was very clear that there were two or three maths topics which ds1 had missed due to the change of schools (as I would expect). I was disappointed that given it was easy to identify these from the work that he had done, that no-one had yet bothered to take the time to do so until I forced the issue.

None of these individual issues would faze me, but I am feeling a certain loss of trust in that the school seems unable to feedback assessments correctly. AIBU to be concerned? In practice we will stick with the prep school through to the end of year 6, but I am wondering whether to speak to the head of the senior school as we consider our options. We haven't yet spoken to the Head of the Prep school - to be honest I'm not sure what we could say other than to express disappointment.

[trixie123]

It sounds like a catalogue of disasters when you put it all down in one place but as you say (in your very reasonable and restrained post) individually they are relatively small things and /or beyond the school's control. Mistakes in assesments do happen - I gave a student a poor effort grade after singing his praises at a parents evening not long before purely due to either a typo or misreading the line in my mark book. A quick e mail back and forth solved the problem. Given the small size of the year group, the missing topics in maths prob. should have been picked up and I think you would be perfectly reasonable to raise that. There is nothing wrong with talking to the head in a constructive way - very different to going in all guns blazing and casting round for blame.

[NinkyNonker]

Did he take his history assessment before or after parents' eve?

[ParanoidSurreyHousewife]

I'm not looking to cast blame, more just apprehensive that I face more of the same in the senior school.

I'm not sure on the exact timing of the history test tbh. But at the parents evening I was only given the predicted report card results for 2 subjects out of 10 or so, so would be surprised to be given a grade which wasn't pretty final.

I'm trying to be fair and restrained on the basis that some of this could just be down to bad luck.