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Original poster

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

61 replies

Neolara · 21/07/2018 00:17

Dd is in Year 9. With 2 days of school to go, we have not yet received a school report. In the last year, the school has introduced an online portal where parents can see how well their kids are doing. It includes numerical values that correspond to target, anticipated and current gcse grades. You can also see if your child has been sanctioned and their attendance. I think it gives a pretty good snapshot of where my dc is at any one point. However, there are no comments, just numbers in columns. No narrative about the children or detail of any kind. Nothing about the kids character or social relationships.

Given that we haven't yet received a report, it has just occurred to me that the school may not be sending out reports this year. They may think the online portal is sufficient. I was certainly anticipating something a bit more personalised. Do you think a report without any personalised comments is OK? Or is this just normal these days?

OP posts:
Morewashingtodo · 21/07/2018 08:19

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FennyBridges · 21/07/2018 08:13

It's completely different in secondary @morewashingtodo but the bottom line is, if an RE, music, computer science or an art teacher see their students for one fortnightly lesson they actually teach (in a big comp) about six hundred students. Some teachers will know every single student and some won't. They're human. Even if they do know the students, and say the reports are staggered so Y9 are written in, say March, by that time the teacher may have had about 9 or 10 lessons with that student.

My point is, it's not possible alongside their teaching, planning and marking workload. Six hundred. Twelve hundred sentences for parents to then criticise, "Bloody hell, two sentences is all she can bloody manage?"

PeterPiperPickedSeaShells · 21/07/2018 08:12

I would imagine that primary teachers write reports for their class ie 30 ish kids. Not the 100 mentioned by
The 2ndry teacher

TeenTimesTwo · 21/07/2018 08:09

We don't get comments at our secondary, and it's fine. If I need more detail I look at books/tests or email teacher directly.

I think there is a big difference between primary and secondary. In primary there is one main teacher for your child who sees them across everything. At secondary even core subjects might only get 3hrs teaching any pupil per week.

Pengggwn · 21/07/2018 08:04

Morewashingtodo

I couldn't care less who 'manages it'. I am telling you, in my school, the time isn't there. It has been used for other things.

Morewashingtodo · 21/07/2018 08:03

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AnotherNewt · 21/07/2018 07:59

In the private sector, you would typically get the data-only sort of report (much as you describe) every half term, with maybe one or two sentences from form teacher, plus full personalised reports twice a year. They might be online, on paper, or both, and there may also be a report on extra-curricular activities.

Pengggwn · 21/07/2018 07:51

It's a time issue. Schools are now so reliant on and obsessed by generating 'accurate' data and grade predictions that there isn't time to write reports as well. I teach about 100 students per year. Writing 100 personalised comments (say, 2-3 minutes per student, with some breaks, some interruptions) is 4-5 hours of work. That time doesn't exist.

NightmareLoon · 21/07/2018 07:00

All students receive subject comments where I work, but we don't have an online portal. Printed reports for all year groups are out by tomorrow at the latest.

Soursprout · 21/07/2018 06:20

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Ohyesiam · 21/07/2018 00:28

It’s normal at my dds comp. Which is fine as she is thriving, but if I was at all worried about her it would feel really inadequate.
In contrast I’ve had 3 sides of A4 from my Ds s primary, as personalised as you could ever want. So completely different.

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