Would you expect to have any personalised comments on a school report?

ours has a portal and we get 3 a year and 1 parents evening

We have a portal. Reports every 1/2 so 6 per year, then a 16 page end of year report which we had about a month again via email, with a text on the portal to say it had been emailed out.

I teach 375 different kids each week in secondary, would love to only have 100/150 !!
Just inputting the numbers 6 x a year takes hours. I do have to write a report for my tutor group but only a paragraph each.

Primary reports are quite varied, in my experience. We have been told that, now the volume of writing has been curtailed, we should ensure that what we do write is personalised and that someone should be able to easily recognise who it's about if the name was removed.
That said, I've still seen some shockingly bland and generalised ones around, not least from Year 6, where I should have thought it even more important to give a rounded and comprehensive summary of the child's progress and attitude.

The personal stuff all comes at Parents' evening.

Or if they are particularly concerned they would contact you. You could also request a meeting of you are worried about anything.

Primary teachers spend hours doing reports that are a waste of time, IMO. Secondary ones are better

assuming they do the same assessment

Big assumption.

There will be zilcho movement between sets as every assessment is completely prejudiced.

No, teachers may be forced to make up grade boundaries and assign them to assessments, but the raw scores mean that a kid can still perform better on an assessment than the set above (assuming they do the same assessment), or consistently perform at the top of the class.

It’s only going to get worse: there are fewer teachers in the profession and the number of students coming into secondary schools is increasing rapidly. No one has any idea who will teach these children, to be honest. If your child has a teacher - the same teacher for the whole year - you’re one of the lucky ones.

People are being made deputy heads before they’re thirty -schools are so desperate to hang on to good people.

And if teachers 'make up' grades what hope is there for children to exceed initial expectations? There will be zilcho movement between sets as every assessment is completely prejudiced.

But if your kid is consistently getting well above class average in tests, then that’s a good sign. If they are consistently getting test scores around the same level as the class genius (kids know who the brainy kids are) then that’s very positive. If they are getting 30% and the class average is 60% then that’s something to be concerned about. If they are holding position in top set maths then they’re doing better than someone in a numeracy support group.

But tbh, that is meaningless without knowing setting information inside out. Or indeed how well the whole year does against national averages.

I'm actually beginning to feel increasingly gaslighted by the whole education system.

No Julia, I said that the grades were made up. Assigning grade boundaries to topic tests, end of year exams and the like is just crap.

But if your kid is consistently getting well above class average in tests, then that’s a good sign. If they are consistently getting test scores around the same level as the class genius (kids know who the brainy kids are) then that’s very positive. If they are getting 30% and the class average is 60% then that’s something to be concerned about. If they are holding position in top set maths then they’re doing better than someone in a numeracy support group.

Talk to their teachers at parents evening. When they do a test, ask what other kids in the class got (they’ll know)
But this would be pointless too as you've said it's impossible for teachers to grade children's work or know how they are progressing and it's all just made up

I do sometimes from HOY commenting on what a fab report it is. Also sometimes from form tutor. Essentially, the report is a page of numbers. Never had a comment from a subject teacher.

I do all that, as far as I am able, noble.

My child does their homework, gets rewards for good behaviour, we go to parents evenings.

Sets are more difficult to keep an eye on. The information is not made readily available. It's a large school, there are certainly sets and possibly streaming. But schools will not really comment on other students progress so we cannot see how our child performs in comparison. We have no right to information regarding setting, I don't think.

It's a shame because we are at a stage now where good revision and exam technique will make a difference. We want our child to be able to put their study time to best use. Direction from teachers is very useful.

Schools could provide more useful data.

But in the meantime, talk to your kid. Make sure they are doing homework. Look at their books. Talk to their teachers at parents evening. When they do a test, ask what other kids in the class got (they’ll know). Keep an eye on sets.

And support the school on behaviour. If your kid isn’t getting good effort grades, or loads of demerits (or whatever the school system is) put a rocket up their arse.

It’s the great school data lie to parents. The more people that know about it the better. You can’t measure progress. You can’t accurately give a GCSE grade to a kid who has never sat a GCSE paper. You can’t predict GCSE grades in Y7. KS3 grade reporting is a national mess since national curriculum levels were scrapped, and wasn’t great before then.
You think those numbers mean anything solid and comparable between subjects? Think again

So, in your opinion, what is meaningful, concerning the attainment information schools supply?

You've said, comments are a waste of time, grades are meaningless. So exactly how can parents support their children to do well or even know how well they are doing beyond actually teaching them from scratch themselves or hiring a tutor?

highlights the area which requires improvement.

No it doesn’t. Second one says Johnny needs to learn his times tables, first just said he didn’t do well on the number tests. This could be for many reasons other than times tables - lack of revision, missing the test and doing it late, not showing working blah blah etc.

Err right....should you be admitting that?

It’s the great school data lie to parents. The more people that know about it the better. You can’t measure progress. You can’t accurately give a GCSE grade to a kid who has never sat a GCSE paper. You can’t predict GCSE grades in Y7. KS3 grade reporting is a national mess since national curriculum levels were scrapped, and wasn’t great before then.
You think those numbers mean anything solid and comparable between subjects? Think again.

It’s a waste of teacher’s workload to write comments. If you knew how little thought went into them you might change your mind on how valuable they are.

I'm not hung up on comments. Just like to get meaningful information. As you have indicated yourself grades can be "made up off the top of the teacher’s head.". So comments can be more indicative of how my child is doing. I just want to be able to encourage my child to utilise their study time in the most effective way.

The first comment gives test results with no info as to why they are as they are. How is that helpful?

It highlights the area which requires improvement. If, with the aid of revision guides etc, you can get your child to improve their performance in that area, the job is done regardless of what was holding them back.

Btw grades aren’t usually compiled in any particularly meaningful or consistent way. Often made up off the top of the teacher’s head.

Err right....should you be admitting that?

Parents evening would give more context and explanation than a comment knocked out in a minute among 200 other comments.

Yes, but if it happens early on in the year parents are left guessing until the next one.

the annual report is a handy and concise single reference document

It’s a waste of teacher’s workload to write comments. If you knew how little thought went into them you might change your mind on how valuable they are.

The first comment gives test results with no info as to why they are as they are. How is that helpful?

Btw grades aren’t usually compiled in any particularly meaningful or consistent way. Often made up off the top of the teacher’s head.

Parents evening would give more context and explanation than a comment knocked out in a minute among 200 other comments.

Added to this the annual report is a handy and concise single reference document which saves looking through several exercise books and loose written tests. Good for parents and teachers to refer to, I would have thought.

noble, yes, a parent could gather the information from the test papers if the mark scheme is straightforward and we received them all and knew what proportion of the overall assessment they accounted for.

We get a grade at the end of the year/term but don't know exactly how the grade is compiled (average of how many assessments, grade curves etc). There doesn't seem to be consistency regarding what is considered meeting targets or not either. The comments helped tremendously decipher all this.

Between the two comments you gave the one you said was 'more personalised, does not really give more information except demonstrate you know the child in question is good in visual and creative art. The first one would be sufficient.

Don’t know about art teachers, I’m a maths teacher. Comments from the records made throughout the year would be looking at test results. I would say ‘Johnny did well in his geometry tests but struggles with number’. The parents could gather this themselves from looking at the tests.

A more personal comment would be ‘Johnny’s strength in the visual and creative arts has transferred well into our geometry work this year where he has performed exceptionally well on transformations of shapes and solving angle problems. His continued resistance to learning his times tables means that he is performing lower than expected in number assessments’.

Most teacher comments at secondary are a bland waste of time. I should know, I wrote enough of them. Thank god they were scrapped.