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?

^ This.

YANBU. What LeQueen said.

"Grammar: The difference between knowing your shit and knowing you're shit"

Oh good, it's bash the teachers time again.

We should all be eternally grateful to teachers, in my opinion. The good ones, that is. The ones who can er, spell. Not unreasonable, really.

I absolutely agree that reports should be error free. However, pointing out every mistake to a pupil is not teaching. To take your GP analogy further - if after correctly diagnosing the problem, a teacher goes on to show how to improve, that is teaching. If a teacher simply highlights errors, THAT is showing off. Some people on here seem to think that lots of red pen = good teaching and being able to spot and ridicule mistakes is the way forward for improved literacy. I was trying to demonstrate why this is not always all that helpful.

YABU. Teachers have to write hundreds of reports in the time in which they still have to do all the other work that they normally do. You perhaps read 2 or 3 reports at your leisure and have plenty of time to pick out all the mistakes. And as reports have got longer and longer, there is far more scope for making mistakes. It was far easier in the days of, 'Cecily has worked well' or the more common, 'Cecily could do better'.

I sure hope teachers don't expect me to be as a perfect parent.

Rose, I don't think highlighting every mistake is showing off, exactly. Some teachers may think it useful; for others it may be just force of habit. When marking the work of able secondary pupils, highlighting every mistake may not even involve much highlighting. For younger and more average pupils, it is probably a waste of time as it is unlikely that they will improve without considerable further explanation. If it was so easy, everybody taught by a red pen enthusiast would be a good speller and punctuator, and that is evidently not the case.

And I shouldn't be on here as, even though it is Sunday, glorious weather and a holiday weekend, I have 210 scripts to mark. And I will be marking them without pointing out every error. I will be marking positively -ie rewarding what is there and not penalising for what is missing. (And this is for an exam board so I could be marking your child's script with my evil red pen........!)

Believe me, Cecily, there are some dinosaur era teachers who love to show off their superiority by highlighting errors (these are often teachers of subjects other than English who use it as a way of having a dig at English teachers) but not actually teaching how to improve. I do correct every mistake in an academically able older pupil as I am expecting totally error-free writing at that level. But, I agree, it would be ludicrous to do that for a child who was struggling. We set individual targets based on what the child needs to do to improve. Some posters here seem to think that literacy problems can be cured by pointing out every error. Oh, were it that simple.

If parents want to improve literacy, they might think about buying more books for their children and throwing out the telly and the X Box. Things with plugs on them have a lot to answer for in terms of literacy.

WhiteWidow - we recently complained to the Headteacher at the dses' school, because it was so obvious that one of ds3's teachers had copied and pasted the comments in his report. Ds3 even told us that he had seen his friends' reports, and they had the same comments as he did.

What annoyed us was not the copying and pasting per se, but the fact that the comments were so useless and lacked relevance to ds3. As far as his marks were concerned, this was ds3's worst subject, given which we would expect the teacher to make some specific recommendations about what he needed to do, in order to improve, but he got the same general comment as the rest of his friends.

I also agree wholeheartedly with what LeQueen has said here - teachers should know the basics of grammar, spelling and punctuation, and should be willing to improve, if their basic skills are lacking in a particular area. I also think that good spelling, grammar and punctuation are important skills for children to learn - but that it is not the fault of individual teachers that this doesn't happen to the standards that I was expected to achieve. Successive governments have meddled so much with the education system that it is very hard for teachers to hit all the targets in the National Curriculum, given the limited number of hours in the teaching day - so some things have fallen by the wayside.

When ds1 was in Year 1, it became very clear to me that their teacher had no time to spend on improving the quality of their handwriting, because she had so much else to teach - if they could get something legible on the page, that had to do. To me, this is wrong. Primary schools should be teaching the basics well - literacy (including the basics of good spelling, grammar and punctuation), and numeracy. By all means teach other subjects (because you can include literacy and numeracy skills in most other subjects), but the core aim for the early years should be to equip the children with the basic skills that they will need for the rest of the educational careers, and beyond.

I believe that a child who has a good grasp of the basics, will then pick up the more advanced work with relative ease, whereas a poor grasp of the basics can hold a child back, and make it harder to do the more advanced work.

So, are English teachers responsible for all errors? Or would it be too much to expect parents and teachers of other subjects to take some responsibility. I agree, English teachers should be perfect. I was talking about errors in a pupil's work. And pointing out an error is NOT teaching. Teaching is showing how the writing can be improved, not simply making corrections. And those dinosaurs ( and I work with one) use literacy as a way of putting pupils down rather than something to be worked on together towards a common goal - perfect writing. Yes, teachers should be able to teach but simply pointing out that a car isn't working is not going to get it to win Le Mans!

English teachers who don't have good spelling and grammar shouldn't keep their jobs, to be honest.

If, in my previous career in business sales I hadn't met my targets, I would have politely been asked to leave the company I worked for.

When I read that only 18 teachers have lost their jobs in the past 40 years, I really wonder what on earth is going on.

And, from my marking, my new word of the week is "mattersome" which I actually rather like. E.g. "For some people improving their health is very mattersome." Well, Shakespeare did make up 10% of his words, or was the first to write them down, so why not the British teenager?

Agreed, Lapis. But you have to hit a child to get the sack because they find incompetence very difficult to prove and the Unions back teachers in every single case. The aforementioned dinosaur should have been sacked years ago (different subject but totally incompetent) but just cries bullying every time proceedings are instigated. I suspect things will change eventually but, because it is the public sector, all change happens very slowly. We had a trainee teacher who introduced "Romeo and Juliet" as, "The only Shakespeare play with any love in it" and is working somewhere now, teaching real pupils.

"When I read that only 18 teachers have lost their jobs in the past 40 years, I really wonder what on earth is going on."

It is hard to sack teachers but that statistic is laughable compared to the number of teachers who walk out of the job within the first 5 years, or are forced out of the job by pressure from senior management instead. That's how it's done. Force and pressure.

I worked at a school where two members of staff not up to scratch were forced out within one term. Neither of them were "sacked" per se but they're gone now. At my current school it took less than half a term to force another teacher out of her job.

Excellent points Rose - I'm a secondary English teacher and agree with your posts. A page covered in corrections doesn't help a child improve much. It's better practice to correct few common errors with a target to get them right next time (and then, next time, pick out other errors to be worked on). When I have time I try to give some lesson time to reviewing their work, explaining errors etc, but too often pupils ignore my corrections anyway - even A Level students!

I agree that some teachers' reports are poorly written and punctuated. But often they're PE teachers. And I believe they're quite good at teaching PE...

I think the statistic is probably flawed. It won't count teachers who have been sidelines out,, asked to leave, persuaded to take early retirement, etc.

Infact the figure just cannot be accurate at all. I can think of several high profile cases alone.

correct a few...

See, errors can creep in however hard we try...

I also know incompetent teachers who have been forced out rather than sacked. Competency proceedings take so long that most teachers bow out before the sacking stage.

Thanks, Pet. We do our best.....

Yes we would all like our DC?s teachers to be perfect: caring and compassionate; love working with children; understanding of each child?s idiosincracities; communicates well with the children; kind; outstanding at behaviour management; creative and inspiring; teaches outstanding lessons; ensures each child makes amazing progress in all areas; is hardworking and going the extra mile for our children; really understands all subjects they have to teach, how to deliver it so children understand and enjoy it and how to prevent the misconceptions or errors children make; has all the time in the world for parents; good at communicating with parents; writes exactly the type of report different parents want, with clear grammar, punctuation and spelling; ?.

But there aren?t enough teachers like that in the system; especially the current system where teachers are not valued by society in general and the government. Teachers are constantly bashed on all fronts and ground down by the job. The numbers of new teachers leaving the profession each year is very high (my DS in Law is one of them) and constant criticism and moving of goal posts will only drive out more.

So if my DC has a teacher with most of the attributes on my list I am extremely grateful and am happy to over look things.

PS I'm not a teacher, but family and friends are/were

My DC's teachers, primary are better than mine were, much better in fact. However, when I was at primary school in the 1960s, if children didn't get to grammar school they were consigned to the local secondary modern, possibly a CSE or two if they were bright and there was an endless supply of unskilled work for them when they left aged 16, or even 15 up until about 1973 I think.

Unfortunately the economy now requires young people to be effectively and functionally literate and numerate if they are to have hope finding jobs in new sectors of the economy. Education seems regrettably to be lagging behind this requirement in spite of improvements.

I don't know if teachers are held in high esteem by most parents. Our DC went to a leafy, sought after, outstanding CofE primary. Most of the parents were professionally qualified and the bar for the teachers was set high and if there were errors they were pounced on. Remembers the Y4 teacher who taught the children that the y axis was horizontal and the x axis vertical . It is sad the bar is not high everywhere but I don't how to break the circle and encourage parents to read to their children and foster the love of learning they might not have had. I always thought it was notable at story time at the local library that most of the dc there were middle class and had a surfeit of encouragement and probably books at home too.