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?

We used to get a report that had all their test results and the class average. That was useful! At least you could see, my kid is struggling in this. They're fine in that. This is a skill for them.

Then they got rid of it for wishy washy nothingness. Literally 'meets expectations' or 'exceeding' . Worse, to get 'exceeding' you have to improve your grades from the previous term/ year so if you were already at the top and have nowhere to go, you will get 'meets expectations'. It's just totally unmotivating for one of my DC who always tries and does very well. Other one can appear to be doing 'better' even though he doesn't put half her effort in.

You are not being unreasonable, but I am a teacher and this happens because there is just no time.

Teachers teach all day. But they also need to prepare for standing in front of a class and presenting material for 6 hours a day (anyone who has prepared an hour long presentation for anything work related will know how long this takes to prepare). Then we need to mark the books, give feedback, go to meetings, input grades and data for around 159 pupils. For subjects like English, we must read the material first, dissect it, simplify it, create activities and resources (often involving time consuming cutting or pasting), organise displays, develop the curriculum, organise school trips (huge amount of paperwork, including risk assessments etc), organise, prepare the material, and run extracurricular clubs, offer after school or lunchtime support for exam classes, chase homework, manage poor behaviour (including following up with parents), write and organise interventions and learning plans for struggling students, read and keep on top of additional support needs (i.e. printing extra resources with blue paper, overlays etc),create differentiated materials, for example, special materials for kids who don't speak English, and lots more.

And none of this is done during the school day because we are teaching. Reports for 150 kids take HOURS. Parents' evenings are our evenings too. We also have kids. It's one late night for you, but around six for us. Not including school discos, clubs, lunch duties, other after school events etc. that we need to staff as well.

In secondary school, at least, reports are a very blunt tool.

Firstly, from a subject teacher’s perspective, it can be very hard to diagnose what pupils need to do. Yes, of course you know the really lazy ones, the thick ones (translated into report language ‘Johnny is challenged by some of the higher-order thinking aspects of the syllabus’), the really hard working ones and the stars. That means, out of a class of 24 (say), you have 10 easy reports to write. Which leaves the middle majority of the class who are doing ok, but nothing special. That is where you will see a lot of anodyne cut-and-paste comments.

The problem is that teachers have a very limited amount of data to work with, unless they are lucky enough to teach the same child for several years when, by the end, they can genuinely claim to know the child a bit. For instance, maybe Flossie has got 70% in her electricity test and 58% in her mechanics test. But does that mean Flossie is more talented at Electricity than Mechanics, the questions happened to be more wordy in one test and numerical in the other, Flossie revised better for one than the other or even she slept much better the night before one.

So, to be honest, some of those longer helpful-looking reports are just elegantly written teacher best guesses (or total fiction, if you are writing a first report for a Year 7 who you have given a total of 15 lessons to and can’t really remember who she is).

Private schools write lovely reports, but they are generally recognised to be more marketing than educational (at least by the more honest members of staff).

Reports are a nice-to-have but non-essential, although they have more value in the last few years of school, especially A levels, where you genuinely do know your students well.

Parents evenings (especially face-to-face) are far better and, if genuinely concerned, initiating a meaningful dialogue with the school or asking for a private appointment is the way to go.

DD’s school only provides grades (at the end of each term), with a very small comments section that is empty for most subjects. They can’t take any time at all, as the grades must be computer generated.

They were given target GCSE grades at the start of Year 7 and are tracked by those. I’ve heard that this is bad practice, but it’s one of the top schools in the country so must be doing something right.

I would prefer something a bit more qualitative, which I suppose we get via parents evening.

What are the regular reports? It seems like a very different system. Do you have regular class meetings (just the teachers I mean) ?

Mine do and but its all cut and paste set statements.

Regular reports would be something like a grade for effort, behaviour and homework plus some sort of attainment grade/comparison to target.

We get emailed reports a few times a year with the grades I mentioned on. Once a year it has a paragraph by the form tutor and senior leader. We have parents evening once a year

I thought I'd miss the comments when our school stopped doing them, but realised it was the grades for everything that told me the most.

We get grades/descriptors for attainment and attitude each term. We have one parents evening per year which has limited slots and if you miss out, that's your lot.

YABU , half of what they used to write was absolute twaddle . My daughter attended school for about 15 half days in yr 8 and was then given a tutor by the ‘ health needs for education ‘ people ( has likely changed names now ) . She was still officially on roll at her secondary school and until the summer term of year 9 I was sent reports where at least half the teachers had given her a glowing report and written lovely things about her effort and behaviour when they hadn’t actually clapped eyes on her .

Haven't read through the whole thread but I know what you mean, when my daughter went through high school all her reports were generic typed just not personal at all.

Because if you are writing or checking hundreds of reports in a short time frame errors will creep in. Parents rightly get upset about inaccurate written material from schools, therefore two checks are needed to ensure they are removed.

I think parents feel even more dismayed by getting no personalised feedback at all - unless they pester teachers directly via email. Even getting their email addresses can be a challenge in my experience

You know all professional writers have their work checked for this, yes? Journalists, novelists, all of them. Making a typo or grammar slip up under pressure is totally normal and not an indication of incompetence.

I agree. Our secondary just gives a grade for attitude to learning (below expectation through to excellent) and predicted grades. They also produce reports which mainly tell children what they need to specifically work on, eg look again at section 1 paragraph 1, but nothing like a proper report with info for parents. I also only realised part way through school that the SEN reports stating working towards target or on target were not a national target but just an individual target set by the school. It therefore gave no idea of what actual level they were working at.

Reports went with the advent of the mega-school. The huge schools nowadays created several efficiencies but like a lot of 'progress' it is always a trade off in which other things are lost

Computers don’t generate grades, teachers do. For the computer to have that grade, the teacher has assessed and entered the grade. Repeatedly. I assure you it takes time.

mine are at a state secondary.

They get a termly report. Two of them will have a score towards effort and approach to learning and another score towards attitude etc. They also get a grade (Wales so still do A,B, C etc) Then the 3rd report will be a full report from the teachers with several paragraphs from each subject. First paragraph is normally about what they have been learning etc and the 2nd about the child.

The full report is timed at different points in the year depending on what school year - so year 11s get them around mock time so that there is enough time to consider any issues for GCSEs, year 7s get them at the end of the summer term so enough time for teachers to get to know them etc.

We have 1 parents evening a year with timed slots for each teacher. We also get phone calls or emails home if the child is particularly struggling or done something noteworthy.

We also have an app where behaviour points are uploaded - good and bad (lots of different categories such as ambition, ready to learn, outstanding effort, skill etc and teachers can note why they awarded them

You have a zoom meeting for each subject. If that throws up greater need, more can be organised. Nothing I wrote in the many thousands of reports I’ve written in my career came as a shock to the student as it was all drawn from what I’d said to them and written in their exercise book. If you want to see all the personalised advice, look there. I appreciate that maybe this could be communicated better to parents, but it’s been raised a few times on this thread and you are still persisting with the idea that a report written under extreme time pressure will tell you more. It really won’t. When I mark a book I comment specifically on at least one positive and at least one area for improvement for every substantive piece of work. Those comments will tell you more than a report ever could - and you can see whether your child is improving by looking at whether/how they respond to that advice.

Thinking about it, I’m wondering whether teachers in the past spent a lot of their private time in the evenings doing tasks like marking, writing reports etc. I seem to remember my teachers at school talking/complain about this. Presumably this wouldn’t be acceptable now, but perhaps It explains in part why teachers no longer have the time?

Teachers in the past didn't do a lot of things that teachers currently do.

@Giovannimilanese ,

Teachers in the present spend a lot of their own time working on all the above!

In the past, though, I think there was far less ‘school report writing policy’ and double and triple checking spelling and grammar and consistency.

To be honest, I kind of agree that the way ahead is quick and dirty reports with content prioritised over style and consistency, but you won’t find many SLT agreeing with that.

The "gained" time is filled up with preparing for the next year, cover and many other jobs that need doing.

My two teens are at a state grammar school. 1 parents’ evening each per year, plus 3 reports; 2 with grades/levels only, and 1 with grades/levels plus a paragraph from each subject teacher.