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?

It's more doable in primary, where teachers have a single class of 30. In secondary, you can teach over 200 students. That makes long report writing much less feasible. Teachers don't get given any extra time to do reports - they need to be written on top of a normal working week, and there just aren't enough hours in the day to do them properly.

Its not never ending for you, but it is for the teachers.
I have had phone calls that should have lasted no more than 5 minutes turn in to 1hr reviews.
And even if it was just 5 minutes that would be 5 minutes for each student, it is not possible to fit in the the amount of time required.
Where I taught our year 7 tutors were required by the school to ring the parents of the new starters by the end of the second week, it would take both weeks to get through the entire tutor group of 30 pupils.

I teach English, but I’m sure if I had to write 170 reports that there’d be some typos in there.

It would be interesting to know how you feel about journalists or professional authors.

But anyway here's Taylor Mali

My children’s school uses Teams and I know there is a wealth of resources and messages added to it by the teachers, but there is no way for me to access it and to keep an eye on whether my children are accessing the resources - my children won’t let me anywhere near it.

Not that it helps but

We used google classroom and that sent a list of topics etc. that we used every month.

Yes, my son used to have Classroom and parents were given a log in to access certain sections, I’d receive a weekly email too regarding the homework he’d been set. The school now uses Teams and we don’t get the same access.

Right ...

So if you wrote 150 reports of about 200-300 words, there would be no mistakes?

How about if you wrote them at 10.30pm after a full day of teaching - or 4am, because that is literally the only available time you had?

Or if you wrote them after having already spent 12 hours marking and giving detailed feedback on assessments that SLT have requested to be included in the report with a week's notice - no mistakes?

Not only are we humans (gasp!) who make errors, but we are also overworked, exhausted and entirely broken by a system that keeps on pushing and pushing - and by parents who have absolutely no clue, yet feel qualified to make awful judgements.

We regularly have posters on here claiming to be teachers who complain about lack of support and engagement from parents.

Personally, the only support and engagement I need from parents is that they, as far as possible, bring their child up to be polite and well-behaved and engaged with learning. But that’s just parenting, it's not some kind of favour to the school. Also, that they do not undermine the school's behaviour policies. That’s about it. If they don't agree with the school's policies and have no intention of cooperating with them, they are welcome to find another school.

That's shocking to say teachers need senior leaders to check their spelling and punctuation!
If a teacher can't correctly write should they even be teaching?

Typos happen. Not all teachers have immaculate SPaG. I don't actually care if ds' physics teacher makes the occasional spelling mistake. The man's a genius physicist and a great teacher. English teachers, linguists and essay subject teachers should have excellent SPaG. So should primary teachers, but they certainly don't always.

If your child logs in, there is a page with all of their assignments on it. Ask them to show you that page - it is the equivalent of you looking at their planner / diary.

My children’s school uses Teams and I know there is a wealth of resources and messages added to it by the teachers, but there is no way for me to access it and to keep an eye on whether my children are accessing the resources - my children won’t let me anywhere near it.

Sorry, but that is a parenting problem. It's not the school's fault that you let your kids prevent you from seeing what they are doing online.

Easy tiger, feel free to calm down!

Your children won't let you anywhere near it?
You are the parent. They are the child.

My children are teenagers who are working out their boundaries and privacy. My eldest is 16 so he should be able to organise his work himself and does, but it would nice to just check in sometimes. No one is blaming the school or teachers!

I am a teacher and our school doesn’t do written reports. Our workload is still very heavy but it has made things a lot more manageable. We do 2 parents evenings for Y11 and one for the other years. I’d prefer to do 2 parents eves for every year group than go back to written reports!

Easy tiger, feel free to calm down!

I'm not sure what about my factual post came across as not being calm. If you are ok with your dc not letting you look at their school work, that's fine. My dc are 15 and 18 and I have very rarely looked at theirs tbh. I just (perhaps mistakenly) got the impression from your post that you were wanting the school to do something about the fact that you couldn't access their work.

So to address the "teachers want supportive parents problem".

What teachers mean when they say they want supportive parents:

Please try to bring your child up so they do not tell me to fuck off or punch me.

If you have any time to support beyond that please try to make sure that they can read, write and do basic sums (mostly primary but surprisingly applicable in secondary)

If you have any time to support beyond that please try to make sure that they do their homework which is (mostly) set to help them make progress.

Frankly, anything beyond that is amazing.

When I was at school our class size was only about 24 and the teachers got a lot more non contact time so much so that my mum who was a secondary school teacher managed to come home for lunch some days (one hour 20 for lunch break).

Today’s reality is almost no non contact time and we frequently lose free periods as have to cover for absent colleagues. Average class size is 32. I see these children for precisely two hours per week as most classes are shared. To be honest I’m still not sure of some of their names by the end of the year!

lunchtime is 45 minutes and usually have to do a duty as well as eat something at my desk. Marking a class assignment takes literally hours - and that marking is done after school. When your child sits an English lit mock, the teachers will be marking four essays per student- times this by 32 and you’ll start to have an idea why so many teachers are leaving the profession.
In an ideal world, I would love the students to have more marked work given back and I would also like class sizes to be a lot smaller so I could write detailed personalised reports. Unfortunately schools have changed a lot since we were teenagers and the reality is that if you want a personalised service you need to go private.

I don't see how asking your teen to show you what homework they're doing or whatever is crossing a boundary or invading privacy.

Good bye 👋

No, I wasn’t blaming the school or teachers. I think the resources they add to school apps such as teams/ classroom is amazing, it blows my mind as I didn’t have anything like that when I was at school…I wish I did. My children are also teens, so that’s why I don’t feel I need to push them to let me monitor what they’re doing unless of course there’s a concern.

My children are also teens, so that’s why I don’t feel I need to push them to let me monitor what they’re doing unless of course there’s a concern.

Yes, I was the same. But they certainly would have shown me if asked.

@FrippEnos you do know that journalists and professional authors have actual editors, right? There will be typos in their stuff too

I was at primary school in the late 50s early 60s and we had 48 in a class. No TAs just the poor teacher and 48 of us.

I used to talk to mine, "How was French today?" "Are you getting on OK with that history project?" It's amazing how much you can discover in a conversation and yes I looked at their books or online for the younger two if I wanted to see how things were going. I think mine viewed it as me taking an interest rather than invading their privacy.

Shock horror for some on here but we even used to chat about what they were doing at uni, I've even been honoured with proof reading for them.