School report is so vague it feels pointless

[Whatdoyouthinkof]

My son has brought home his spring term report and for every subject he is working towards..school has sent a separate guide that every child at this stage of the year will be working towards as not completed school year and a few exceptional children will be working at. Am I being unreasonable to wonder if nearly child is working towards what’s the point of sending home the report?
If my child is struggling I would genuinely like to help him but I feel there is such a vague approach to reports these days I can’t work out if he’s doing well or not. Is it normal to receive a school report and feel none the wiser?

What do you mean “with levels” - I’m in Scotland and we still have levels.

Ours looks like this:

That's great that you report like this. Unfortunately my children's state schools did not. In primary I was simply told whether they were working towards, achieving or exceeding. In secondary it wasn't much better.

But it is the exact same information; just presented in a different way?

Betty would be exceeding.
Erica would be working towards.

No school can report where a child is with regards to their national cohort unless it is at a national assessment point. If your child's school are telling you relative to the class, that's fine and can be an accurate reflection of how they are performing compared to others in their school. However, if they are claiming to be providing you with a national centile then I'm afraid they are, at best, estimating based on a tiny sample size and those estimates are likely to lack validity.

Especially since OPs children apparently get this info from a private school; therefore their results are likely to differ from “national averages” anyway.

No, I understand that I will only know how they are doing compared to a national cohort at key exam points. At other points it is useful to know how they are doing compared to the school cohort. The private school gives me this information. The state school does not.

Not really. There is an enormous range of abilities in exceeding, or any of the other bands. With the old levels I could see if my child was a 5 or a 6 if they were exceeding or a 1, 2 or 3 if they were working towards.

So the private school might tell me that they achieved 78% in an exam and the top mark was 80%, the lowest mark was 40% and the average was 60%. I find this information more useful. Or they might tell me that my child only achieved 42% and then I know that they are really struggling in their cohort.

I remember C average for music & art, we'd say that it was teacher for who?

I'm not a teacher or anything related to teaching. But it's pretty clear the teacher did exactly what you asked for...

I used to teach and I think the old level system was much better. It was more work for teachers but explained exactly what level a child was working at in reading, writing and maths at least. I think when they changed the GCSE letters to numbers they should have made the existing numbers go up further so that you were on the same level system all the way through from Year 1. Once those primary and KS3 levels were gone school reports became much more wishy washy.

My son is in Year 10 and for the first 3 years his school had a 3 word code to say whether a child was behind, average or ahead. But the words weren't very clear and a lot of parents interpreted the behind word as them being where they should be. We were told in Year 7 that the aim was for my son to reach Level 4 at GCSE, which knowing him and the slight learning difficulties he has I knew was quite unlikely. At parents evenings I often asked if it was felt he would still make the Level 4 and was told 'well if he works hard he might.' Again I interpreted that as unlikely but, having taught, I know a lot of parents might think he was on track. So in Year 10 when he finally brought home a school report with predicted grades of Levels 2 and 3 it wasn't a shock to me but I could see that it could be a massive shock to some parents.

The level system was wishy-washy and, in the end, meaningless. It was a best fit model rather than an absolute so teachers would end up giving children a grade that they, actually, hadn't earnt because they were mostly there rather than because they were accurately there.

One a year- not each report of more than 1

Agree with this.

It's my job to check and proofread reports at school. The copy and paste stuff is so boring and pointless that I fall asleep.
I think 1/3 should be about what they have studied, and 2/3 about the pupil's attitude, effort and attainment.

I fully sympathise with teachers. At my DC's state primary the cut and paste didn't work "your DC visited the local museum and was highly involved and interested" with a lengthy description of what they saw and the point of going there - the DC in question had been off ill that day. I didn't want screeds of writing - I wanted what my parents got. Individual pages per subject with one line for performance/comprehension/next. EG

Crosstalk was 33rd out of 33 in this terms test.
Crosstalk clearly thinks she doesn't need to understand what crops are grown, why and where.

Crosstalk needs to pull her socks up.

In my day the teachers had to do handwritten notes, it was that long ago. This could be done in seconds on a spreadsheet. My parents leapt into action and I rose to 32nd out of 33. Parents who can't be bothered with reports ignore whatever they get, parents who are bothered get the point fast.

Civil servants designing these reports need to make life easier for teachers and parents.

I taught for most of my working life. Starting about thirty years ago, reports gradually became consolation prizes for parents and were more about protecting the school's image than giving factual information. Political correctness meant that you could not say anything that could be regarded as negative, like 'does not always do his homework'. I remember one HoD who dreamt up alternatives such as:

Doesn't do homework = Adopts a cavalier approach to his work outside of the classroom!

at parents' evenings, we had to explain gibberish like this.

A friend of mine is a Primary School teacher, apparently they have set lines and phrases to use. They cannot make it individual in fear of making an upsetting remark / error.
shame, I’d rather hear they’re a bit lazy and could do a bit more work etc.