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?

Are you a teacher? This feels like a very rude and patronising response

Yes I'm a teacher and if your response to that post is to object to the tone then you're really missing the point.

The education system is collapsing due to underfunding, under-resourcing and lack of staff.

People understand that the NHS is in crisis and that they might not be able to get a doctor appointment, or an ambulance or see a dentist.

Now apply that to schools. Your kid might not get a teacher.

So if you're wondering why you're not getting a written report...there's your answer.

Schools have done everything they can to ensure teachers no longer get ‘gained time’, things have changed from 20 years ago.

Sorry, what is ‘gained time’

Teachers often behave like this on MN. You are asking reasonable questions. The defensive rudeness is par for the course here.

My kids have just finished secondary and we got reports every year. They were useful. Just a line or two but my kids definitely acknowledged and responded to the good and ‘bad’ in there.

I am sure schools have not been wasting their time for the last few decades. It’s ok to ask why the change.

I don’t know if we were lucky but my kids had damn good teachers. Only one or two poor ones. They were good at their job, some were amazing and I told them (and the heads) so. They were polite, fun, engaged, positive and interested and I am still in touch with a couple. They behaved nothing like the vocal rude versions on MN.

Time teachers are meant to have once year 11/13 have left. In reality instead of using to plan for next year they are used for cover to save money

I disagree, I think tone is important.

I’m sure schools were underfunded in the 70s, too. I don’t see writing reports as a costly exercise? Teachers could keep a running excel chart & fill it in throughout the year if key observations about students occur to them.

This is starting to sound like you are not posting in good faith.

When the sort of reports we were doing 10-12 years ago were sent home at end of the year, they would contain a lot of information but it often seemed that busy parents never really got round to reading and digesting them at the time. I am much more in favour of just one or two points clearly made for each subject plus possibly a number or grading system.

My children have had some fantastic teachers too.

At my school we only do written reports for certain year groups - year 7 to give details on transition, year 9 to help aid GCSE options and in year 11 and year 13 for examination guidance and prep.

It is so time consuming. Not just writing them, but also checking them. As subject leader I need to check all reports written by my team, before passing them to my line manager who checks again. It simply isn't sustainable to do for all year groups, particularly when all year groups have a parents evening where you can share progress and/or raise concerns.

I simply don't have time for that.. I teach 300 different students! What would you like me to give up to allow that to happen?

I appreciate its a nice idea, but as more people quit teaching than join the profession we need to be making the job better, not add more admin. However, I do think the timetable should assign time for me to talk more with parents, not just the ones who got into trouble that day, but the genuinely delightful students who try their best every single day.

what do you mean? I am absolutely posting in good faith!

I’m trying to understand why something that seemed fundamental to the school system has suddenly disappeared- and to find out if this is happening elsewhere?

There is no gained time now and if you take out year 11 and 13, that’s still five year groups of reports. 30 per class except for year 12, means 120, if you have one set per year group and one subject. If you have more than one set and more than one subject, it’s doubled or tripled.

Why do they need so many checks?

It’s just the lack of any personal commentary on the report whatsoever that feels very impersonal and a bit meaningless.

The mastering, securing etc doesn’t tell you much at all.

YANBU. I get a grid of letters and numbers every term - letters for effort and numbers for attainment. It's then left up to the me to contact the DC's 8 or 9 different teachers to find out how DC's grades can be improved, what to work on, dips or rises in grades, help with understanding the charts etc. Surely it would be quicker for teachers to make a short comment per subject rather than respond to hundreds of emails?

Because the only response you made to my post which explained what is happening in schools was to call the tone 'rude and patronising'.

If you were genuinely interested in why nice-to-haves are disappearing from the school system, my post explained it.

@Giovannimilanese

I'm not sure what's changed, but I can tell you my experience.

Amongst some other changes to workload, I stopped being required to do handwritten reports 8-10 years ago. My lessons are now far better, I have improved energy/stamina and my department's results have gone up from late 60%/early 70% grade C+/4+ to late 80%/early 90% (I'm a HoD)

Reports are just one of the recent workload changes that have made a genuinely positive impact on my working conditions and my students' outcomes.

In terms of usefulness and understanding where your child is struggling, what does the report not tell you? I imagine you're getting grade and some kind of effort score. If the grade is low and the effort score is low, there's your answer. If the grade is low and the effort score is high (and parents' evening is not soon), pick up the phone.

I'd love my department to still write something personal, but what happens to the rest of their job when they're writing them? It takes 10 minutes per student if you're really efficient. That's 5 hours for one class of 30 (and 25 hours probably if you're doing all your classes).

Perhaps in the past it was OK to teach shit lessons during report weeks? It just wouldn't fly now.

Why the heck do SLT need to check what the teachers have written?! What a waste of their time?!

I totally get it, but the system just doesn't provide time for that! I already get into the building at 7am and leave at 5pm to get my children from nursery.

Data drops already take about 3 hours of PPA and that's just results in a letter and grade as we have to do a lot of extra (in my opinion) pointless spreadsheets for SLT. If they wanted me to add comments too how long would that take?

I don't have a solution, and I don't think it's fair either but I don't think anything will change.

We check for grammar/spelling errors or mixing up pronouns. You want every child to have a unique report but inevitably some statements apply to multiple students, so sometimes copy and pasting leads to errors or disrupts the flow, or just doesn't make sense! Mistakes are also going to happen when you are asking teachers to work to really tight deadlines alongside their normal workload (marking, uploading data, planning lessons, doing break and/or lunch duty, running detentions, contacting parents, re-writing schemes of learning, dealing with a safeguarding issue).

Teachers used to have fewer classes and fewer pupils in those classes, so report writing was easier and frankly there were more mistakes or generic statements in them - looking back at my own school reports some were clearly copy and paste jobs which defeats the point. By the time your school report is published it will have been checked by the subject teacher, subject leader, SLT lead, exams/reports lead and then published by admin. Times that by 7 year groups and you would be report writing or checking non-stop throughout the year.

Underfunding of schools and high expectations from Ofsted also means we are expected to do more with less time - safeguarding concerns take a long time to deal with and have doubled since the pandemic! Poor mental health, bullying online, young students vaping etc.

I agree it's lovely to have reports to look back on but secondary education is in a really sorry state and it's just not the same as it used to be.

It is a lot of work but I do agree the current system is absolutely meaningless.

@Octavia64 you said SLT need to check for spelling and grammar....🙄🥴😵‍💫

We definitely don't get hundreds of emails. Maybe 5 or 10 parents will get in contact with us!