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 can be simultaneously true that teachers have a ridiculous and unreasonable workload and a very difficult and professional job - and that there are a significant proportion of terrible teachers.

Of course. There are poor employees in every job. I've certainly worked with some bad teachers. I'm not sure how that contradicts my rejection of that poster's claim that teachers have 'god-like status' on MN though.

There are certainly plenty of threads on MN where the OP appears to have very legitimate cause to complain about a particular teacher or school. However, there are also many nasty and very inaccurate comments about teachers in general. Far, far more than comments conferring any kind of superior status on teachers as a profession.

Just remember how we were treated on here during covid!

Exactly. I mean... teachers had always got plenty of flak, but the bile at that time really was an eye-opener. That and the astonishingly ignorant, naïve and totally unworkable suggestions about how we should have been doing things. My personal favourite was the idea of socially distancing by scattering all the different classes/year groups of a secondary school into random unused buildings around the city / local area. Genius!

Just remember how we were treated on here during covid!

Weird wasn’t it - ranging from I don’t know how teachers do this all day - to why aren’t they working harder?

Couldn’t win.

To be fair, when the head teacher of the school I was at during Covid actually tried to rent an extra building to assist with social distancing, the local authority essentially prevented him. Definitely schools were damned if they did and damned if they didn't!

Don't forget the tents on the playing fields, that was gold.

I think what I really remember was the endless screaming at us that we were less deserving of consideration of our safety than people who worked in supermarkets, and that if we didn't like that, we should quit.

And now here we are.

Ours doesn't even pin down a grade in case it upsets other dc apparently so it's vague bands.
My other dc school gets a speficic grade.

Except courtesy of RAAC a local secondary IS being taught in tents on the field!

I'd forgotten about the tents!

I will never, ever stop being sad about it. I've never worked so hard in my life as in that period.

And that we should be more like X country but without the measures that they put in place.

And one school doing that is exactly the same as all schools doing that. LOL

Can you see the difference?

Well I’m a teacher and I think written reports give really useful feedback. As a parent I also think they’re very worthwhile. Yes they take time but I don’t begrudge it. Independent school if that makes a difference although I still did them in state schools I worked in. Part of the job. Yes some bits are cut and pasted as a relevant to all pupils (work covered) but 75% is individual.

The idea of a teacher cut and pasting onto potentially over a hundred reports a section that is 'relevant to all pupils' as is the work covered strikes me as a monumental waste of time. Stick it on the school website.

How many pupils per year group? 300?

I will never, ever stop being sad about it. I've never worked so hard in my life as in that period

I didn't, because I was made redundant (I was doing a combination of peripatetic MFL teaching, supply and one-to-one work in different schools at the time). Dh was running online provision and driving round delivering laptops to kids though.

Yes this is the difference. I’m maths so I only teach one class per year - so max 24. That’s a huge school mind you at 300 per year. None as big as that in Scotland where I’m from. Surely no teacher is teaching 300 kids in one year group?

Primary teacher here. As far as I’m aware, schools have to provide one school report a year. It takes absolutely ages!
I also have to admit that because we can’t be honest with comments e.g. you might write that a child is social as opposed to chatty but even the worst kids reports have to be positive. Thus, it becomes a pointless task, it can’t be totally personal due to this so then takes longer because you can’t be honest so you have to think of creative ways to ‘fluff it up’. My opinion is they serve no purpose other than to make parents proud but ever increasingly, with little reason to be proud.

I’m very l lucky in my school, I have wonderful children and I love to show them I’m proud, but I’d rather reward them with a fun day, or tell their parents regularly than formal reports that take days and weeks to write, edit, proofread etc.

You have a lot of answers but no idea what is going on in schools. Your ideology of ‘teachers can just do this’ is applied by almost every person never to work in education themselves about every task they undertake.

Hence why I’m paid for 19 hours a week but work 40 as a part time teacher.

everything is ‘if you just do this’

Our year groups are 230. One teacher teaches all of y7 RE. Another teaches all of year 7 personal development.

I think that’s a bit different. But that’s the extreme. I don’t think we’re talking about that here. More just the core subjects.

Why just the core? Arguably I have a much easier time because I see my classes more and have fewer of them.

That's one of the reasons we got rid of written reports in lower school - some staff simply couldn't write the volume of reports.

The way I've had to manage my staffing the past couple of years we've had teachers in KS3 with two groups in a core subject. So that's 50-64 reports per year group. Plus managing the complaints from parents that they can't all get a parents evening appointment. But we're not in a situation where I can spread the load differently so we're here.