to think school reports are a load of shit

[shortofbread]

My dd1 who is 5 has had her first ever report card. It doesn't have one positive statement in it.

Anything verging on positive shot down by words like 'sometimes' and 'generally'

She is 5 ffs.

The statement that really makes me want to laugh and cry all at the same time is 'Little Miss Shortofbread is sometimes confused by processes but she generally works well once the process has been clearly understood'!

Is it just me?

rockpool- i remember handwriting reports!! At the school I worked at you wernt allowed to use tippex, the frustration when you made a mistake on the last page and had to write the whole thing out again!!

Another teacher in the midst of report writing season!
Each one takes me about 2 hours to do, last year I counted and I wrote 17,000 words! I try to be as honest as possible, each one is "personal", we don't use report banks. However there are some subjects where there is little differentiation in what you can say "XXX enjoys/hates music and sings enthusiastically/like a startled frog" just about sums up a whole class of year 6's!

We had the no Tippex thing too!!!

As a primary teacher, I spent hours on my reports for my class, age 8. I then got them back with lots of changes to make, WTF'nF??? I was actually very upset about this and cried.

Apparently, I am not allowed to thank parents for supporting their child at home, or for doing an optional project at home. Nor am I allowed to say that I enjoyed a particualrly animated discussion with a pupil. I cannot say anything that mentions their family at all.

As for the comments that are the same, as someone else said, they have all followed the same curricular programme, there are only so many ways to skin a cat!!

I made a comment about Art, PE etc if I knew/could remember that they were particularly good or had done/made something really note-worthy. I tried to put something on every child's.

I agonised over whether to write sometimes, generally, very good, good or steady progress etc. And I sat with their jotters in front of me so I could be absolutely certain if they could use capital letters and full stops etc.

Ditto maths, I assessed each one on their tables etc, but yes, but that was about a month ago when I started. It's worth noting that parents will say, Oh he can say the 6x table at home. Well, I had at least 4 who couldn't do it without a lot of help and we've done it in class every day this year. They were absolutely not able to do it, and may I say that they were asked to do it in a relaxed situation.

I have often been really paranoid about what I have said re maths etc, in case someone came back and said, well let's see if pupil X can tell the time then. So I wouldn't write it unless I was sure.

And we don't have banks of comments. Yes, I might copy and paste bits, but on average, each report has taken well over an hour. The first one took 4 hours.

I agree that they don't really tell you much, it's all spin-doctoring. We are not allowed to be negative and interestingly, I said that one girl, whose father teaches in the school, was well-behaved and polite most of the time. The "most of the time" was taken out" !!! So I am not allowed to say anything negative about a teacher's child!! (and she is not well-behaved ALL the time, otherwise I would have said so!!

The last time this happened, I could hardly bring myself to sign them, they just weren't mine any more, could have been about anyone, TBH. I have always prided myself on making my reports personal to each child, with a view to letting parents know, Yes, I do know your child well, and yes, I do actually like your child.

All this positive stuff, and leaving out the negative stuff, just paints a false picture and leads people up the garden path.

I know that lots of school use 'tick box' reports now where you tick beside certain comments from a bank. Personally I hate them as they are very impersonal but we have a robot senior teacher who loves them and pushed for them to be introduced. Some teachers love them, mostly the ones who can't be arsed proofing their own work afterwards. And in defence of said robot it looked really bad reports going home where people hadn't bothered checking them I would far rather have a handwritten scrawl with a %, place in class / year and a brief positive comment with a target.

I teach secondary and we were told to take out all of the "X is a well-friendly mannered child..." personal stuff and just focus on statements which detail progress and attainment. We are not allowed to say anything positive if they are not making expected progress.

Our reports are received on parents evening, where we can discuss the child's personal traits and social progress face to face, which is all well and good, but attendance at our parents evenings usually sits at around 40%, many parents just collect the reports and go, or only attend English and Maths. It's a flawed system.

we used to use the set statements but there was the possibility of adding our own sentences. the computer as programmed to know the sex for each name so statements would contain he and she. the report you have got seems to use particularly naff statements.

last years report from reception for dd was just a cut and paste of the 9 levels from the early learning goals. they may as ell have photocopied the sheet ith the ticks on as it would have been quicker and there may have been more information as statements may have been partially highlighted or a mark for no evidence ould reassue that she may be able to do it but that the teacher had not actually seen her building or whatever. the fact that your dd needs to practice counting to 100 may just be that she has not done it in school because she is too busy playing in the sand and enjoying herself.

even when reports werre handwritten, teachers used a bank of statements they had collected over the years, though of couse there as much more scope for variation.

I like to know how she is doing with what she has been taught, can she concentrate and work independently (yet) (pigs might fly) what she is doing well on , hether she is prrogressing and hat she needs help wioth and what she needs to do next. (which she may be able to do at home but not in school but still useful info. )

cubbie well said.

I am also sat here writing mine. We have to use a bank of set comments, but they were not given to me as a file, so the first job was rewriting all of the bank (copying from a paper file!) which took me the best part of a two full days. I now have a 6000+ word file which is split into boy/girl comments, low/middle/high ability comments for EVERYTHING that is commented on. I might just add that given I think that this cut and paste thing is awful, I did totally rewrite most of it.

Now onto the 'easy' part of the job. Hmm. Not so easy. If I were literally to just remove each of the comments which are not applicable, I would be left with a report which was totally generic. Which, as a parent, and a teacher, I find unacceptable. So, first of all, I copy, paste and cut the master document down to the first appropriate draft (about 1500 words). Then, I spend between 30 - 50 minutes on average per child rewriting it, so that it accurately reflects their child.

I am 100% certain that most of my reports will get returned to me, because I have been too personal (mentioning things they have particularly liked, times they've made me smile, things they have specifically done at home and brought into school etc). So it is likely that even once I have finished them, there will be a lot more work to do to 'undo' them.

I have 31 children in my class. Anyone who thinks that writing 'cut and paste' reports is the lazy way out, or easy, should try doing them for themselves. We are just following what we have been told to do. Actually, that's not even strictly true. If I were, I would have been given a computer file, and I would simply have selected comments with no care or attention at all. The tick box system also sounds nice and easy!

I also agonise over whether to write 'sometimes, mostly, generally, always' etc. We are also definitely not allowed to write that a child is naughty, or does not listen. How ridiculous! Surely parents want to know if their child is a little devil in school?!

angelico I would far rather have a handwritten scrawl with a %, place in class / year and a brief positive comment with a target. I could not agree more. Seriously. Clearly parents do not value the reports system the way it is. I actually am not sure why I am spending my entire half term doing them, as most parents will simply think 'oh, a generated generic report', and not appreciate the amount of work which has gone into each one!

Too tired from report writing to even check if this post has typos or grammar errors in it - if you can spot any, let me know, and perhaps you could come and spellcheck/grammar check my reports for me too....eyes are currently blurring on the screen!!!!

Oh..and finally...Cubbie, I know this feeling well!!!!
The last time this happened, I could hardly bring myself to sign them, they just weren't mine any more, could have been about anyone, TBH. I have always prided myself on making my reports personal to each child, with a view to letting parents know, Yes, I do know your child well, and yes, I do actually like your child. All this positive stuff, and leaving out the negative stuff, just paints a false picture and leads people up the garden path.

I agree with Cubbie-I used to write really personalised ones before they got prescriptive-one of my reasons for leaving teaching.

oh yes, re... what can you say when you have had the children for half a term (in the days when some reception children came in for one term)

I detest the comment banks we have to use. They limit what you can say enormously and sometimes they end up not reflecting the child at all. Its difficult to personalise them using the comment banks. From pressure from the staff they allowed us to complete part of the post 16 reports without the comment banks but no change lower down the school.

Unfortunately, having been teaching a while, I have read a number of very dubious and inappropriate comments on reports and we did used to get the odd complaint. I think that's why the comment banks were brought in.

YABU- your DD's report sounds awful but some teachers really do care about theirs!

My DS's school reports are brilliant. His teachers have managed to put a different spin on "X needs to stop talking and listen to instructions" in every report from Rception to year 6!

itdoesnthurttohavemanners

Thank you!!! A few years ago, I would get feedback forms from my parents saying how much they enjoyed reading their child's reports and how certain parts made them smile e.g. the personal references.

Just like you, I thought it was important to mention these things. Part of being a primary teacher is the relationship you have with each child, and you can always think of something personal to say, even about the little rogues that make classroom life a misery a fulfilling daily challenge.

I work in a different school now, but in the same authority, so I don't know whether the HT is behind the "no personal comments", or whether that directive comes from the Authority. She certainly won't even explain why these comments have to be removed. Either way, it makes my blood boil and IMO, it does the parents and children a disservice.

A friend whose children goes to school in the same area complained to me that the reports were vague, all very similar, mentioned things they had done months ago etc. I had to explain all the reasons for this.

That's the other thing, parents think that it's US who decide what to write and how to write it. They have no idea that it just all gets foisted upon us!

My kids are getting to the end of primary and have seen two reports per year each from nursery upwards. I would say in general that the standard is pretty good. I've had the occasional error where the wrong name has been in but that was from a teacher I view as outstanding and she would write screeds of very constructive stuff so I forgive the odd bit of cut and paste.

They had one teacher that was simply a lazy cow in all aspects of work. My youngest had her for primary 3 as did my eldest and the report was sparse and bland and probably the exact same as everyone else's in the class on both occasions. However in my youngest's case, his previous reports and all reports after describe him as a pleasure to teach and give him top marks for virtually everything - her report had no personal comments and marked him straight down the middle for everything........I wondered if she was teaching the same child!!!

All this positive stuff, and leaving out the negative stuff, just paints a false picture and leads people up the garden path

I agree....the risk with this approach is that you don't see problems early, it does no one any favours. I'd rather have nehaives, so long as they are set into context re rest of class.

As a language assistant in Germany I was asked to write reports on my older year groups' conversation classes. I'm also shit at remembering names. I had one lovely girl in a group of 6 from Tuesday lunchtimes and had never known her name (there comes a point where it's just too embarrassing to keep asking, or at least I felt that way as a 21 year old teaching 19 year olds). I couldn't work out what I was going to do so in the end I typed up (days before computers) an 'English style' report layout with space for name, class, DOB etc at the top and did 'writing my own report' as an exercise I carefully took note of which paper she handed in and finally knew her name .

But sometimes the grades aren't worth much either. Last year my eldest dd got a grade 5 for effort in one subject. This is the second worst you can get and normally means they're disruptive etc. All we got was a list of grades so i emailed the teacher to ask for specific examples of her poor behaviour so i could discuss them with her. Turns out she'd put in a 5 instead of a 2 (second best). I do insist on my children behaving at school so thank goodness i asked for examples before i gave her hell for it! It made me wonder how often they're wrong!