To think secondary students should get written school reports

[Giovannimilanese]

When I say ‘written’ I mean typed out, not necessarily hand written

I was going through my own old school reports from the 80s/90s recently. Twice a year there was a full written report with a paragraph from every subject teacher. I found it really interesting to read the observations and to see the way some of the teachers noticed skills/talents and weaknesses that I personally only became fully aware of much later.

My own dc have attended a mix of state/private schools. The Indies still provide decent reports with detail but my youngest is in Yr8 at the local state secondary and hasn’t had any written reports. Apparently they have stopped doing them. Twice a year they get a basic list with a number from 1 to 5 for behaviour, homework etc and once a year a grade - ‘Mastering’, ‘Securing’ etc

The only organised contact with teachers is a zoom parents meeting once a year, 5 minutes with each teacher. Is this normal?

I appreciate that writing reports must add significantly to teachers’ workloads & I’m sympathetic about that. I’ve also noticed (including at private schools) that the comments sometimes seem heavily cut & pasted anyway.

But I think the personalised feedback can be incredibly useful, both now and for reflecting back on in the future, and think it’s a shame if this is no longer the standard…

AIBU?

My daughter is in Year 7 and gets a full written report including every subject at the end of each term - in addition to parents evening during the term and surprised you wouldn't get them at least yearly

Ah I love my old reports!

my DC in secondary state get a termly report which is just marks, but in the end of year report they do get a personal bit from the tutor… I agree though, nothing like the reports I got in the 90s. In state primary my kids got an annual report which in theory was personal but in practise was very cut & paste, occasionally other child’s name not deleted etc!

Yes YABU

My school (state) still does written reports.

They are automatic descriptions generated from the grades we put in as teachers.

Written reports that you type yourself either take hours if you do them properly or if you don't they still take time. Then senior leaders have to check them for spelling and punctuation.

The actual information you need as a parent is contained in the achievement grade and the behaviour grade. If you want or need more than that contact the teacher.

Teachers should teach not take hours and hours writing reports that few parents read.

I agree - DD gets a written report (and grades) I think twice a year, plus parents evening - it is very useful.

DS gets parents evening and two print outs with incomprensible numbers on them and whether he is meeting his targets, which aren't especially clear. Written feedback would be incredibly helpful.

YANBU - this is the case at my son's (LARGE) secondary - they get a termly update on progress (working towards/at/beyond) as well as behaviour points etc - also 5 mins parents evening slots. The only way I've ever found anything beyond that is when my child has been selected for a phone call home due to outstanding performance - but that has only been once.

Did your child start Yr 7 in September just gone? My dc is in year 7, we haven't had a parents' evening at all, and only one report so far, which was a symbol for each subject, achieving, over achieving, under achieving. That's been it so far!

My DD's school is exactly the same, even down to the 5 minute zoom parents evening twice a year. It's a shame that the teachers can't do a full report at the end of the school year as their workload will be lighter with the year 11s and 13s being off.

I am from Canada, so have a different experience in secondary school (no GCSEs or A Levels), but we received two midterm reports and two end-of-term reports every year for each subject. It included our overall grade, the class average, and a paragraph detailing our performance and understanding of the material. There was also a portion dedicated to learning skills (effort, punctuality, teamwork, social skills, etc). I have many Canadian teacher friends, and this is still mandated.

We actually received these all throughout Primary as well.

How are you supposed to know how your child is doing and help manage their education?

We get a grof of numbers every term.
I know she's doing great in Maths, but not so good in English, despite a good effort grade.

But I don't know what exactly is holding her back. Is it her comprehension, her grammar, her processing speed?
Could she do with extra help now in Yr8, or would it be better in Yr10/Yr11?

Yes, a teacher’s insights can be so useful. I disagree with PP who said parents never read them.

DSS is in year 7, he had a written report ( typed and loaded onto an online platform) before Christmas, he also had a parents evening in October in person and another in May. I'm assuming there will be another end of year report as there was a end of term 1 report.

Many teachers don't have Y11 or 13 on their timetables, so get no benefit from "gained time". And writing a job lot of reports for every class you teach, all at once - not a good idea.

I only read the personal comments and check for the subject marks (really just interested in english and maths) and am grateful for less paperwork!
The majority of it all is cut and pasted. But

Exactly the same and I think it's poor. But then a good chunk of his teachers are subs. And 1 parents eve a year where they rush through hardly knowing who they are. (As you can tell, I'm very impressed with his secondary...)

The standard for reports in secondary education in the U.K. is that they are progress reports.

So the child comes to secondary school. The school will look at their sats results and set gcse targets based on that. From that they will set ks3 targets.

(It is considered bad practice to share gcse target grades with students prior to year 10).

Schools have their own grading system for ks3 - there used to be a national one but it was abolished. Most have gone with some kind of levels system which they use different words to describe.

So something like:

High targets: words like mastering, excelling, greater depth, etc

Medium targets: securing,

Low targets: emerging, developing

Then the report is how they are doing based on their targets. So if they should be high attaining kids but do badly in tests they'll be marked as underachieving/below target. If they have low targets but do well on tests they'll be marked as over achieving/above target.

The idea is that it makes it easy to see if the kid is on track to do as expected in GCSEs, and parents/the school only need to intervene if the kid is below target.

Teachers workload is far too heavy for such niceties unfortunately. A lot of schools still do written reports but they tend to be from comment banks and that’s arduous enough. More staff, smaller classes and more ppa time would help teachers give more personalised information. At the moment there are much bigger issues in secondary schools than report writing.

Also, at one point in my many years teaching I would up teaching a lot of year 7 classes (largely because I was re-writing the year 7 curriculum at the time).

At the time my school still did written reports and I had 3 classes worth to write. That's 105 kids. That was in top of my normal teaching etc that week. I wrote them. They really weren't that personalised.

I still remember the one-word comment on my senior school reports under Art:
‘Weak’.

It was all too true, though!

Our DC got written (online) reports at secondary

By contrast, year 11 and year 13 pupils get incredibly detailed feedback.

So written reports in ks3 do not help students progress, mostly because students don't respond to them. The research evidence is that the effort put into writing them has no impact on progress. If you as a parent want to help them then email the teacher and the teacher will give you detailed feedback.

Year 11 will get very very detailed freedback on each of the two mock exams they do. In maths we give them question by question analysis of how they did and a list of their own personal top ten topics to revise plus videos of how to do questions s on that topic. It takes hours.

That's where the effort and feedback goes these days - into making sure more kids pass the exams.

Teachers aren't there to provide you with concrete material for reminiscing. Compared to in the past, teachers' time is massively taken up with pastoral and behavioural issues now. They have not got time to be writing these things and as leaders we do not have time to be checking them through. Simple as that.

Not always the case and not a workable reason to do full written reports for a number of reasons:

• When Y11 and Y13 finish most teachers go into overdrive making curriculum improvements for the new academic year.
• Some schools even start their new year in June, so get their "new" Y11s and 13s immediately and would only "gain time" if they have a new Y7 class that only come up in September.
• Some teachers don't teach Y11 or Y13, particularly newer teachers, so they don't have a lighter load in summer and would have to write 180+ reports in one go. Not fair or manageable for probably the least experienced teachers.
• If any group need personal written reports the most, it's Y11 or Y13 so parents wouldn't be happy with this model.

If full written reports were brought back, they'd at least need to be spread through the year because the post-exam "gained time" is a misnomer for most and non-existent for some.

Trust me, school leaders wouldn't have gone to this new way of reporting unless they had to. There isn't a reasonable solution anymore.

Some schools clearly still do it from the responses on this thread, but I don't know how and I don't know any IRL.

YANBU how depressing

What would you like teachers to stop doing so that they can spend tens of hours writing reports that you think are personal but are usually copied and pasted? A sentence saying 'Johnny needs to concentrate more in class and stop chatting' can adequately be replaced by an 'unacceptable' in the 'class behaviour' column on a progress report. 'Johnny often hands in homework of poor quality' can be replaced by a number in a homework column.

Secondary school pupils often don't have qualified teachers for all their classes. They're learning in poorly-resourced classrooms. Often the buildings are too hot or too cold to learn effectively.

There are plenty of things that need fixing before we can demand fluffy non-essentials that people just like having.

But what has changed? It was the standard for decades. Why is it no longer possible?

Useful reports seem like something really important, something to be prioritised- especially if parents are to support their children at home. Knowing exactly where they are struggling is so vital