To expect my DCs' teachers to send out school reports correctly punctuated?

[Peppin]

Was looking at last term's school reports this morning. They included the following statements:

"Its good to see X progressing so well"

"theres a good reason for..."

and a few other howlers.

I have also noticed when looking through the DCs' school workbooks at parents' evenings that various spelling mistakes/grammatical errors they have made have gone uncorrected.

AIBU to expect teachers to (a) know how to use apostrophes and (b) take sufficient pride in their own professional image to ensure they check the spelling and punctuation in school reports before they are sent out?

cherrypieplum - 2000 word reports, wow! My DCs' teachers do reports on a standard template that involves box ticking and only 1 paragraph of free text. Usually about 5 sentences. This is a state school. I have to say, I expect them to proof read all reports and correct them.

By analogy, I am a solicitor. If I were to send out a letter to a client that included misspellings and lacked punctuation, I wouldn't expect to be able to dismiss it with "everyone makes mistakes". We're taking about TEACHERS here! It's not as though this stuff doesn't matter - it's their very bread and butter!

God this annoys the hell out of me. Done people find it hard enough to get to grips with spelling/grammar with teachers who at least know the rules themselves. What hope do they have if their teachers don't!

That was meant to say "some, not "done"! And it was my phone autocorrecting again!

Yet AGAIN. It is not in our job description to proof read. A teacher's job is to teach, anything that is outside the remit of assesment, delivering and preparing lessons is supposed to be done by someone else.

Therefore: it is my job to write a report, but NOT to proof read it. Proof reading is classed as admin, and therefore should be done by an admin person.

It's no good saying we "should" or "could". Proof reading can be done by someone who is not a trained teacher, therefore it is outside the remit of a teaching as defined by all the unions and the government (well the last government, but I don't think this has changed under this government yet)

This was defined as a non-teaching task, under workforce reform some years ago.

YANBU. LeQueen is right. It isn't about correcting every mistake a child makes, it's about communicating accurately and effectively with parents once a year and ensuring they feel confident in the capability of the teaching profession. If teachers can't demonstrate an effective grasp of the basics, it dilutes confidence that they are able to teach the basics and erodes respect for the profession overall.

YANBU At our school there is no way any spelling or punctuation mistakes make it out to the parents. We were all given a list of common spelling and punctuation mistakes before we started writing this year's reports. Once i have written my subject report, it then goes to form tutors who proof read and correct all mistakes, then to head of year who finds any that have slipped through the form tutor's beady eye, then finally they go to the head who is the most thorough woman I have ever met so she has never ever ever missed a mistake in spelling, grammar or punctuation. Teachers that have made a lot of mistakes are given lessons to improve their report writing skills before the next year groups reports are due.

I have been appalled by some of the reports I've seen for dd1. She had better spelling in year 4 than her teacher did.

Don't get me started! I'm an English teacher and obviously our department's yearly reports are pretty much perfect, give or take the odd computer error. I just give up when it comes to other dept's errors re: literacy! Just the other day, a student came to me on report and the report (written by every teacher the child has) contained so many basic punctuation errors..It shouldn't just be up to English teachers to take care with spelling/pnct/grammar!!

I agree that reports should be written well, without spelling and punctuation errors. And teachers SHOULD definitely proof read their own reports before handing them in. If types they should additionally go through the spell checker there too = but proof read manually as well.

But they should also go through at least one more level of proof reading again, either by a line manager, the head teacher or another specified person in the school.

I can spell and use punctuation correctly, but when typing fast I am prone to typos. As said before proof reading your own work can be difficult as it is very easy to miss mistakes - but you should then leave it a day or so if you can and reread after that. And hopefully with a second layer of proof reading going on afterwards it should reduce the chances of errors occurring.

Peppin I would expect a short piece of writing to be checked and double checked especially letters and short reports. I manage to get the majority of mine (I promise about 2000 words!!)out with few errors but I can think of one typo in the last few years. Still rankles with me but one in three years that it happened and around 172000 words is pretty good going.

Not as bad as the ones my younger brother received last week.

They'd blatantly been copying and pasting standard pre-written reports instead of tayloring it to each child, because my brother got called 'Mark' a few times in his. When we compared it to his best mates it was nearly letter for letter.

Just add mark is not his name ha

Spelling mistakes really rankle. Not so much typos (we all make those), but actually using the wrong word, eg this week my son - according to the note written by the training teacher in his reading record book - was very good at "site reading".... That got a circle and !!! next to it....

And it's all very well to say, well, teach them grammar etc yourself at home if it matters so much to you, but they seem to take what teachers say as gospel, even if it's utterly wrong.

We have had homework teaching how to use colons wrong, a teacher who didn't know that "well" is an adverb, a teacher who REALLY didn't understand fractions, misused apostrophes in school newsletters, wrong spellings on list from TA, musical scale with wrong notes painted on the playground, and I could go on.
I have never complained about any of these, just explained to my children (with help from google) that the teacher was wrong. I did try to talk to the fractionally challenged teacher, but soon realised that she was scared of maths and didn't know what I was talking about. This is at an "outstanding" school, (which I think is actually pretty good).
It's up to parents to teach their children, and also to point out that school (and every other institution) isn't always right. I used to try and point out errors occasionally to the teachers, but the problem is with the teacher's general education, and you can't fix that with a few little corrections.

No, of course you aren't being unreasonable. I'm a teacher and the spelling/punctuation of many of my colleagues is atrocious. Having said that, the spelling/punctuation of many people full stop is atrocious

my DCs' teachers

When you're posting about poor punctuation, it's always best to get your own right though ;)

Whoever commented about punctuation saving lives-that's where my username came from! I also like this one...

I once helped my uncle, Jack, off a horse.

Sorry to lower the tone this early in the morning...!

whitehorse it's "tailoring" not "tayloring". I agree that it is not an unreasonable expectation to want teachers know how to use punctuation appropriately but as others have no doubt said, sometimes teachers are writing literally hundreds of reports in a very short time frame, having just marked hundreds of internal exam papers. It is entirely possible that an occasional typo creeps in and the checking is done by form tutors who have to read 30 x 12 subject reports as well as writing their own subject and form reports. This all happens during the same working day as usual with lessons to teach etc It is unreasonable not to expect a few errors given that is the case. NO schools have the resources to employ people just to proof read.

sorry, whitewidow, not whitehorse. I probably cut-and-pasted in error . Incidentally, in the circumstances I just described, cut and paste does happen because there are only so many ways to say roughly the same thing, eg they are making steady progress, maintaining work of a good standard but in order to progress, need to increase the depth and detail of longer essays. That is true of about 75% of my history class. How many different ways would you like me to say it?

Many of those postin on here are clearly highly literate; no one chooses to put written posts on a forum unless they are confident in writing. No one would post on this particular thread without being supremely confident writers. However, we teach those who lack confidence and need a lot of support. Simply covering a piece of writing in red pen, tempting though it may be, teaches nothing but how to cope with failure. We target particular skills, often with specific targets for each child. For some it may be use of the semi colon; for others, simply to remember a capital letter.

For those of you wanting everything corrected "because it didn't do me any harm" then good for you. But for every one of you there is someone not posting on a forum because their teacher corrected everything and so they gave up. Correcting mistakes is simply showing off, not teaching.

Posting, does, of course, usually come with a "g"!

On a lighter note, a colleague of mine nearly sent out a letter for a trip out reminding pupils to "bring your willies"!

My spelling was appalling right through school and university. It got a lot better when I worked in an office and kept a small dictionary in my desk so I could look up any word I wasn't sure about. We had an electric typewriter to type letters on but no spell checker, so I was fastidious about checking my letters and correcting mistakes. My co-worker, on the other hand, made horrendous mistakes and I was horrified when I read her letters! Underlining and correcting her mistakes did not go down well...

But roseformeplease whilst appreciating your comments about the red pen, as a parent, when a teacher writes a report about my child's levels of achievement, I expect it to be well written. If it is not, how can I trust the teacher to impart rules and knowledge which is correct and continue to hold the teaching profession in high esteem. I wouldn't hold a doctor who misdiagnosed in high esteem or who prescribed the wrong dose because he didn't pay attention to detail .

which are correct