shouldn't ALL kids get an end of school year report?

[laalaaland]

Maybe IABU, I really don't know.
We recently moved back to the UK, my 6yo joined year 1 at the local primary for the last 4.5 weeks of term.
They have been in a very different educational setting so we really wanted to get them in for a while before the summer, so we could then work on any gaps before next school year starts.
Last day was yesterday, still no report at pick up, so I quickly asked their teacher. She said she hadn't done one as they had only just started. I explained we wanted to know so we could help them catch up over the summer, as I was worried they might be below average with reading and writing. I then got a one sentence, "yes they are very behind with reading and writing but seem ok with maths, just need more time to get it on paper."
I know this has been a crazy hard year for teachers and all that, and I wasn't expecting a full report, but some kind of feedback to give us a clue on how they had settled in...just a paragraph hand written on a piece of paper would have done. I got the distinct impression she had NO idea what my child was like and basically hadn't bothered with them at all.
AIBU to have expected just a little more?

I would second reading eggs - my dd really improved reading wise with reading eggs.

For goodness sake your child is 6, she doesn’t need to “catch up” , read to her and play junior scrabble. And let her play this summer!

I think you wouldn't be unreasonable to have asked for a parents evening type chat. At our secondary school, year 7 and year 12 parents can chat to the form tutor after 4 weeks about how they settled in. (This is a social not academic chat since secondaries obviously have lots of subject teachers) When my children were at primary we could email the teacher. I'm not suggesting that you should do it now but if you'd done it a week or two ago she could have prepared some advice about things that you could do over the summer.

Yes you are being unreasonable, sorry. Asking for an informal chat 10 mins before or after school would have been enough.

MyDC The OP has specifically said that she wants advice on things to work on with her child. Which is why people (who know a bit about it) are giving advice. Of course he should have fun and play too ...

Your school website might have some information about how they teach reading. It's likely to be different from how you were taught if you went through the UK system. Traditionally, the letter sounds were lengthened so c was pronounced /cuh/, whereas now the emphasis is on the pure sound /c/ without the uh ending.

To be honest, I'd ignore it all and spend the summer reading, playing and talking with your child, then send him back in September refreshed and eager to learn.

Next term, make an appointment to speak to the new class teacher a couple of weeks into term. They should be able to tell you how he has settled and if there are concerns what school are going to do and what you can do to help. Don't wait until Parents Evening, it is likely to fall too far into the term and the appointments aren’t long enough.

Sorry have picked up from pp that the child is a boy, but OP does say girl.

@Myothercarisalsoshit you spectacularly missed the point, encouraging play is the best thing the op can “work on”
Reading to a child is the most important thing you can do to improve a young child’s literacy levels. Junior scrabble is an excellent game with learning benefits.

Your child is 6 and like many children over the last 18 months is behind. As many have said expecting a report on such a short space of time is ridiculous. In my old job an employee wouldn't get a report if they had less than 60 days service.
That aside spend the summer doing reading/reading games and basically enjoy yourselves.

The vibe from my local primary is that the expectation is that things will be back to normal in September as far as the children's education is concerned. I would engage with the new teacher in the new school year to find out what the plan is for your child.

[quote MyDcAreMarvel]@Myothercarisalsoshit you spectacularly missed the point, encouraging play is the best thing the op can “work on”
Reading to a child is the most important thing you can do to improve a young child’s literacy levels. Junior scrabble is an excellent game with learning benefits.[/quote]
No shit, Sherlock. I only have 22 years of experience so feel free to ignore, OP.

I can see I’m in a clear minority but actually I think YANBU. Schools have a statutory duty to provide a written report on a child’s progress, and I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect an assessment of whether your child is working at expected levels in reading, writing, and maths, plus a brief line on how they have settled in.

@Smartiepants79

What you want to know can be found out in a 5 minute conversation with the teacher. We had to hand our reports in 2 weeks ago. I can’t write a report for a child I’ve only know for 2 weeks. That would be a ridiculous waste of my time. The previous school could do you one though!

Quite so, and indeed OP says they did have a conversation with the teacher ,who said that DC was behind in reading but Ok with maths. OP, what more do you actually need to know? Your DC is only 6, you can do extra reading with them over the summer, and maybe see if you can arrange a few playdates so that they keep up the social connections they have made in the last few weeks. Is there a class WhatsApp group? There'll often be someone organising a picnic in the park or similar.

@ThanksItHasPockets

I can see I’m in a clear minority but actually I think YANBU. Schools have a statutory duty to provide a written report on a child’s progress, and I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect an assessment of whether your child is working at expected levels in reading, writing, and maths, plus a brief line on how they have settled in.

I'm sure the fact that the child was in the school for a couple of weeks prior to the report writing would override that?

@ThanksItHasPockets

I can see I’m in a clear minority but actually I think YANBU. Schools have a statutory duty to provide a written report on a child’s progress, and I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect an assessment of whether your child is working at expected levels in reading, writing, and maths, plus a brief line on how they have settled in.

You are technically correct but only by about 2 days, so I think the school could be forgiven in the current climate for thinking the previous school would have reported on the OP’s child.

Taken from The Education (Pupil Information) (England) Regulations 2005 but similar if OP is in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland.

8) Where a pupil has been registered at a maintained school for less than four weeks, it shall be sufficient compliance for the purposes of paragraph (3) if the governing body of that school or, where applicable, the local education authority transfers such information and record as they have received under this regulation from the school at which the pupil was previously registered in the form in which it was received by them.

However, as a Year 1 parent, I am very thankful that the OP started this thread because I have found this thread extremely useful and thank you to all the posters with advice and links.

@Myothercarisalsoshit and yet with all that experience you suggested reading eggs over simply reading and play. Reading eggs is good, but it’s not substitute for one to one reading with your child.

@ChloeDecker I’m familiar with the legislation. The passage you quote still means that the ‘new school’ has a responsibility to provide a written report but that the content of that report can come from the previous school. I still don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect a broad judgement of whether or not the child is meeting expected standards in reading, writing, and maths.

[quote MyDcAreMarvel]@Myothercarisalsoshit and yet with all that experience you suggested reading eggs over simply reading and play. Reading eggs is good, but it’s not substitute for one to one reading with your child.[/quote]
And she's already doing that so ...

[quote ThanksItHasPockets]@ChloeDecker I’m familiar with the legislation. The passage you quote still means that the ‘new school’ has a responsibility to provide a written report but that the content of that report can come from the previous school. I still don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect a broad judgement of whether or not the child is meeting expected standards in reading, writing, and maths.[/quote]
Did the OP not get that with the conversation? The legislation also states that it does not have to be a written report but can be any communication such as a conversation.

You’ll have to direct me to that particular section, @ChloeDecker, as it’s not my understanding. The guidance for this year tells schools to ‘consider the most appropriate method by which to share reports with parents, which may be electronically’ but I don’t read this as suggesting that a verbal report is sufficient, more that email might be better than paper.

@ThanksItHasPockets

You’ll have to direct me to that particular section, *@ChloeDecker*, as it’s not my understanding. The guidance for this year tells schools to ‘consider the most appropriate method by which to share reports with parents, which may be electronically’ but I don’t read this as suggesting that a verbal report is sufficient, more that email might be better than paper.

In the Covid19 additions:

It may be most appropriate to hold a virtual meeting or hold a telephone discussion.
Following the cancellation of the summer 2021 national curriculum assessments, the Department for Education (DfE) laid regulations to remove the requirement to report the outcomes of key stages 1 and 2 tests or teacher assessments in this year’s reports. These regulations also remove the requirement to include comparative information about the attainment of pupils of the same age in the school or nationally for this year’s reports. These regulations came into force on 20 April 2021.

However, I do agree with you that technically, it would have been helpful to have received something without the OP having to ask but if the previous school didn’t pass any information on, if the OP missed the window of everyone else getting a report or if it has just plain been an awful last few weeks with isolations and so much extra work, I personally feel that the teacher could have been forgiven in this instance.

The telephone call / virtual meeting refers to the requirement for schools to provide details in the written report of how parents can discuss the report. It doesn’t replace the requirement for a written report.

YABU - your child was there for the tail end of the last term of the year, what real assessment do you think the teacher would have made
in less than a month?

My DD was born in Spain, when we came back to the UK I did the same as you did and enrolled her in school for the last 6 weeks of the summer term so that she could settle in as the Spanish system is very different to the English one (lunch at 12pm for an hour instead of 1-3pm; school finishing at 3pm instead of 5pm etc) and I wanted her to get used to it and maybe even make a few friends so that starting the new term wouldn't be so intimidating.

I didn't even think about a report, but what I did do is email the teacher and ask her if I could make an appointment to see her during the last week of term (and I acknowledged that it was a busy time of year ) and basically had a parents evening style meeting where she gave me some basic ideas of where my DD was schooling wise as well as socially. It also gave me the opportunity to ask what kind of things I could support my DD with during the summer and if she had any recommendations. I got lucky and the teacher gave me a copy of the curriculum from that year as well as a copy of all the worksheets etc that the students had done throughout the year. Obviously there was no expectation for DD to do everything provided but by having the same resources the other children had used I could get DD to do a bit of practice eevery day which helped with the subject and her confidence in reading/writing English and see if she was struggling with anything in particular so I could highlight it to her teacher in the new school year.

Op just thought of a few links you may find useful.

I have kept an eye on where my dc are on book bands using some of the age related expectation charts online. You have to be careful with old resources as the curriculum changed in 2014 I believe and the expectations for primary aged children became higher.

This chart is helpful: www.readingchest.co.uk/book-bands#a

I believe the ideal reading band for end of year 1 is orange.

If I’m right and the last book your child had was Cluck on the Read Write Inc scheme, then you might find this chart useful to ‘convert’ the Read Write Inc bands to normal book band colours: www.templelearningacademy.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/RWI_correlation_document.doc

I partly taught my dd to read myself because of the two lockdown terms - she was only just blending when the first lockdown came. Because of lockdown she didn’t go to school at all March to Sept in her reception year. We picked a reading scheme she liked and I just worked her through it, buying each book online in turn. We read every day at least once and often twice and because she was excited by the scheme she was keen to read.

I think you could achieve a huge amount over the summer with her. My dd just suddenly clicked with it all at some point on red books and then she was away. She wasn’t a particularly early reader but has caught up now. So many dc in year one are behind at least a little bit due to lockdown.

In exactly the same position - DC in y1 and 3 who will have done 5 weeks at school after moving from abroad. I have no expectation of a report - I've just booked an appt with their teachers to have a chat through if they've noticed any gaps/issues we can address over the summer.
How can they write a meaningful report?

Based on the "red book" and the "cluck cluck", it sounds like your DS's school are using Read Write Inc as their phonics programme. Have a look on YouTube. There are lots of teachers who have done full phonics lessons for home learning. I would start at "set 1 RWI". For comparison, I teach a bilingual class abroad. Most of my children started school last year without any English. None of them finished the year on red level. That would have been seriously below expectations. When we've got new children joining, the focus tends to be on their phonics first and foremost.
I guess it depends on where your child went to school previously.