Do you let your children read their school report?

[FawnFrenchieMum]

YABU - Yes of course I do
YANBU - No I don’t

What’s your reasoning behind your answer?

In my day the question was more: "Should I let the parents see the report?"...

Of course I do, it's their report.
What do you think OP?

@britespark1 exact same situation here . To be fair his teacher did a great job of the report it must have taken her ages to do it up and word it

Yes why would you keep them in the dark? My kids always loved getting their report and hearing from their "god" - whichever teacher was beloved at the time.

In saying that our school has great communication so nothing on the report will be a surprise - if your school isnt that may be a reason to review first?

DD's (primary) school asks the children to comment on their reports; a bit difficult if they haven't read them. They all contain 'next steps' so constructive feedback as well as positive comments.

If you think there are difficult messages in there I would only give them the gist. It's a document directed at parents.

In my kids' school they read them themselves during form time - before they are sent to us!
After that we read through them together, over a hot chocolate/soft drink and chat through it together. This isn't something they dread - I don't expect them to be perfect and it is good to have targets to work towards. They both know that I don't mind if there are comments about struggling in a particular subject, provided that the effort/behaviour comments are good.. They know that is what is expected of them so that is always reflected in the report.

My DDs report is all worded positively with somethings to work on which is fine but all her subjects are working towards, she’s missed a lot of school after covid due to a serious illness and already worries she’s behind her peers so I’ll probably show her the written report but keep the coloured achievement box to myself. I don’t think it will help her seeing it (all green for effort though which I’ll verbally praise her for obviously).

When my DS was in primary he had undiagnosed SEN so wasn’t always as positive to read, I tried to shield him from reading his.

Just made me wonder what other peoples thoughts were.

Primary, no, because it would have been counterproductive for DDs to see how behind they were. I did read out selected highlights.

Of course you should. It's about them. I don't understand why you wouldn't

Just because things are about our DC doesn't mean they are aimed at them.

Yes, but this was back in the dawn of time when they bought a paper copy home so they'd gone through it well before l got a look! We got an email telling us to look out for it so they couldn't just dump it in a bush on the way home ...

Teen's school make the kids read through them the day before they are uploaded/emailed out so they can correct any obvious howlers and practice their excuses.

Dd have an encouraging report from one of the games teachers for a sport (and fixtures) she chose not to do this year.

Your approach sounds right to me in the circs. Sometimes all the info is not the responsible choice, eg when the child wouldn't have the maturity to process it and might take it out of context.

Yes but not before I’ve read it.

yes of course I do.

Primary - no. I have DTs and one was more academic at that age so it was very unfair to compare.

secondary - didn’t really get reports but they came along to parents Evening and heard all about it.

Of course!

I remember reading mine with my mum when I was primary school.

Yes I do but to be honest that’s an easy decision because it’s always glowing. So I let her see it so that she can feel proud of her achievements. If there were negatives or if she found school difficult in any way I would probably cherry pick the bits I thought she needed to see.

My DS's always has comments addressed to him - so yes. He's only had one slightly iffy report, in year 5,which referred to eye rolling, chatting and distracting. It was very out of the norm - he was still aloud to see it. Back to normal this year!

Yes of course. Never occurred to me to not to.

Primary school infants ATM, I tell DD what her teachers said she is doing well at and the positive comments, then mention a couple of things they think she can practise over the holidays.

In secondary school, well of course they read them. We used to get ours in an envelope at school to give to our parents but most of us opened it and read it before we even got home tbh. It might have my mum's name on the envelope, but it's about me, and it was handed to me, so I'm going to read it first, end of. Usually they text parents to let them know we had been given them, so they'd know if you'd had a bad one and tried to hide it when you came home and didn't give it to them!

I do but like others have said, if I was expecting less positive/constructive stuff that they would take to heart I might not, or be selective.

As kids we were never allowed to read ours till both parents had seen it, part of their very formal parenting style. Both of our reports were generally fine, no idea why the Victorian approach was needed. We were never allowed to go to parents evening either, a babysitter had to be got, they would go off together and come back with serious faces and give us a nod of approval. rolls eyes

DD1 has SEN so we told her the highlights when younger.. . She really didn't need to know how far behind she was, but did need to know the stuff about how hard she works.

Shes Yr6 now... she wanted me to read the SATs results first then tell her. She cried with relief.

DD2... we just followed the same pattern.