school reports....RANT!!!!!

[mrsforgetful]

ok.....reports are great to have but in my case i have 2 autistic sons and not one reference to this is mentioned in the reports.

is this because the teachers do not want to atribute/blame autism for a problem they are having...comit it to paer incase i 'use it in evidence'.....or is it cos some parents would complain if the teachers 'slandered' the child with their disability???

Personally i'd rather a teacher say 'He gets distracted,fidgets and calls out' probably due to his Asperger's'....rather that simply 'he is learning to call out less and sit still more'

I am PROUD of my sons and feel that to not acknowledge their disability is as bad as a teacher not acknowledging their 'gifts'

theres loads of 'this is what they do well' and not much of the stuff we need to work on.....i know reports are now a far cry from the terrible slating that i got when i was a girl....and i understand the need to be positive etc.....but if a child has struggles then we need them comited to 'black and white'....i just can't help but feel these STUPID 'impersonal'comuter programmes used to write reports are half opf the problem...all they seem to be is a description of the curriculum covered to date....and for example to be told that 'he can recognise and write all numbers to 20' tells me nothing as i have no idea whether that is 'good' or bad.

Rant over

[SueW]

DD's report this term runs to 18 1/3 A4 pages i.e 6 pages of A4!!!! She's just finished Y2. In every area she has been awarded (along with the 300 other children in the school a mark for effort (1-5) and another for attainment (A-E). The vast majority of it is pick-list comments and, to me, the best bit is the last page where the class teacher does a short summary and the head adds her comment.

Like you I find some comments particularly useless - 'she can tell the time on an analogue and digital clock recognising quarter to, past, half past and on the hour'. Heck, I know she can tell the time better than this because she tells the time more accurately than this at home!!!

Nevertheless, her report has some particularly good pieces, particularly relating to sport and art, her weakest areas, where the comments and grading reflect her ball skills (or lack of more accurately!) and her frustration at not being able to produce things as she sees them.

Do you get a comments sheet to return to school? If so, perhaps you could reproduce some of your post here on there. Perhaps it should not be necessary for you to raise the subject of their autism first but by doing so, the teachers may feel they have 'permission' to do so in the future.

[Jimjams]

Do the class teachers know how autism affects your boys though mrsf? I mean ds1's class teacher knows that he is non-verbal, have given copies of reports to her that list his receptive language skills as being at a 12 -18 month level and yet she still sends home notes asking me to "explain to him than pinching hurts" ie she doesn't understand the simplest thing about how autism afects him. The teachers may not be sure what is part of the condition and what isn't iyswim.

Luckily the people who work directly with him are brilliant but they don't write the reposts iyswim.