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?

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?

Last year it was one report but yes - two number/letters/phase - one attitude one grade - once a year 5 minutes and sometime not all teachers are there.

What makes it harder is over the years it become over years and kids became clear teachers and department use the grade differently some it where they think they'll end up at end of GCSE course or ks3 other what they get now.

Of course, I understand the assessment and planning takes time. But the overall grade is computer generated, as is the report.

I guess my main point is that I think it would be useful to have some qualitative feedback as well, rather than just the grades (which we mostly know anyway as she already receives her test results).

It's such a double edged sword. On the one hand, I agree that the written reports have a much nicer feel and provide lots of rich detail about students. However, when you look at the practicality of writing a long report for 300 students it just falls apart- the only way to make it efficient is to copy and paste paragraphs (i.e., I have 2 students, both well behaved and achieving a grade 6). This leads to inevitable mistakes of him/her or the odd name copied over and not changed.

Giovanni - you think tone is “important”, yet you seem to expect other posters to ignore the goady tone of your posts. Your 14.53 post is frankly offensive, dressed up as faux naive. When I worked as a teacher I spent 4 evenings during the week and one full day each weekend plus most of my holidays working. So no it isn’t because the current crop of teachers are sticking to 37.5 hours per week.

My children are at an excellent, sought-after state school and we get the same - termly reports with just a learner score (effort/attitude) and achievement score in spring/summer term - meeting/above etc or GCSE grade number from y10 onwards. Then a 4.5 minute-per teacher parents evening once a year.

It took a bit of getting used to this ‘shortage’ of information compared to primary school but now mine are in the later stages of the school I’d say it’s enough. I know I could contact subject teachers to arrange a discussion if I had any concerns. In all honesty it would probably be a waste of teachers’ time churning out hundreds of reports, the majority of which would be copy and paste jobs. I don’t think they’d add much more than can be communicated at parents evening or in the learner/achievement scores.

So far my year 7 DS has only received numbers or letters and no comments at all. So we're left, as parents, struggling to understand really how best to support him so that he can go from developing (in a few subjects ) to securing. He equally has no clue how to improve as he does not receive any personal feedback, the best I've seen is a printed out paragraph which is so vague as to be almost useless.

So we don't know what he needs to do in order to improve, assuming that the school and teachers do in fact want him to progress and be where he needs to be in those subjects? A couple of specific pointers in a written report would be really useful.

A PP suggested emailing the teacher if you have concerns / questions.. and yet so many times on here you read how teachers wish parents would stop emailing because they're a total PITA. So, I'm a bit reluctant to do that if I'm honest, plus as a working parent that's a lot of time for me to be chasing up feedback from a variety of teachers.

Also a grade for behaviour doesn't tell you that he keeps chatting to his mate when he should be doing his work or day dreaming or whatever.. it's just way too generic. I get that the whole system needs to change, and it's not individual teachers' faults, but I am currently baffled as to how my child is going to progress and do his best if this is the best we can expect for the next 5 years.

THIS is what I saw on a regular basis in my job (retired last summer) as a teacher trainingh tutor.

The students know they need to read and act on it. Parents can help by regularly looking at their children's books.

I think written reports are a waste of time. We get 3 reports each year, giving target grade, achieved grade and attitude to work grade. It also details positive and negative behaviour points. If you have any issues or want to talk anything through, you can contact individual teachers or any other relevant staff. If there’s any issues, the school contacts parents. Imo this is all that is needed.

No, it’s not. Computers don’t generate grades. When you get a numerical report like that teachers have had to enter it onto a special spreadsheet or bit of tech (even though they’ve probably already put it somewhere else). It does take time. Lots of time when you teach hundreds of students.

Have you had a look in his exercise books? Assuming they come home they’ll have a wealth of personal feedback which is subject specific and aimed precisely at helping him to achieve his targets.

Just got ds3's middle of the year report. A column of subject names, a column of achievement in the subject (foundation, expected and greater depth I think), making progress (yes or no), attitude to learning (poor, acceptable, good, excellent), effort (poor, acceptable, good, excellent), homework (poor, acceptable, good, excellent, not applicable). Then a couple of sentences what they are doing well and what they need to work on.

I loved reading my old school reports (in fact my mum recently sent me my secondary school ones so I had a good re-read of them!) and do think it is really nice and informative for parents, but it must take teachers so much time to write them all that I wouldn't blame them for not wanting to.
In the country I'm in now they don't even do written reports for primary school - in the lower grades you just get a report stating whether or not they are satisfactory in each subject and from 4th grade up its a number grade for each subject (4 being a fail and 10 being the best. No idea why there's no 1, 2 or 3 though...) but nothing personal at all, which feels a bit meh compared to school reports when I was in school but I bet it is far far less hassle for the teachers, so they can spend more time doing actual teaching.

Oh, come on…you can’t believe this.
There’s loads of stuff about teacher workload and average hours worked all over MN and the press. Teachers work hours and hours outside the school day or no lessons would get taught, books marked or target grades worked out, never mind reports. You know teachers are given (at best) 2.5 hours per week of non contact time to do all this? She; do you think it gets done if not in the evenings/weekends/holidays?

Secondary teacher and a parent to a secondary aged child.

At my school we have 1 parents evening a year, progress report every half term and a written report every year.

DD has a progress report every half term.

I much prefer DD’s school policy. Her progress report lets me know what her target is, where she is in relation to target, effort grade for subject participation, effort grade for subject homework. If there is anything of concern, I could contact school. Some way say it’s numbers but those numbers are meaningful and clearly
explained.

Progress reports at my school give a standardised test score (no grade as that was deemed to effect mental health) and the reports are capped at 800 characters so I just cut and paste generic comments - complete and utter waste of time and meaningless.

In my first few years of teaching (2000-2003) we did write reports - handwritten! But that was when I used to have classes of 25 max, PPA plus extra time, no performance management (!), no computers or email so no daily emails from parents … the list goes on!

I don't think they are a loss.
There is only one report I can remember and it was completely ignored. The focus of my reports and parents evenings were telling my parents what they already knew.
The one report I remember was Spanish in year 10 and the teacher was the only one to notice my depression even though I didn't recognise it in myself. I only ever used negative adjectives in Spanish if given the opportunity and I had start to disengage with the subject. It was put down as "maybe you don't like Spanish" and for me that was a missed moment. I was diagnosed with fairly severe depression during my a levels by which point it was an uphill battle I have spent my life dealing with in a time when teachers had the chance to write something personal and related to the student why make them write a stock collection of 5 phrases copied and pasted into the appropriate students file. If the words have little meaning and have little impact and have a high effort it's not hard to see that they aren't a good use of time. I am incredibly grateful for all of the 1 on 1 time I got from teachers during my a levels and it was a lot more impactful than that ignored school report
In my day the goal amongst the higher attaining students was to get an A4 for a class. Highest achievement least effort and it did become a bit of race to see who could keep up the A grades with less and less effort so every approach can have a flaw

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

What's changed? The whole job has changed. The expectations of teachers have changed. The workload has skyrocketed. I've been a teacher for very nearly 30 years, so I have seen it happen.

Also, schools are much, much more narrowly focused on results. That's why you get progress reports instead of teachers waxing lyrical about the quirks and individual character traits of your child. It may be nice (or sometimes not!) to read a character study of your child, and it certainly might be entertaining to look back on when they're 20, but it's not necessarily useful when it comes to tracking and maximising their progress. The usefulness of reports shouldn't be dependent on the writing style of the individual teacher.

I think the opposite. I went to a grammar school in the 80s and it's obvious to me that the teachers had far less to do than teachers do now. They delivered the lesson and then how we did after that was our problem. If we didn't progress that was our fault for not working hard enough. Nowadays teachers are held accountable for progress and expected to make sure all kids do well and provide evidence and data.

My favourite (one line, as I described earlier) subject report was when I was 15. It was for PE and games and at my massive school, we rotated round various teachers taking the different gym and games activities during the year. The teacher who wrote mine was a male teacher.

It said "Shows little interest in the subject". For the past 5 years, I had been a regular player in the school netball, tennis, hockey and basketball teams. I was in the first eleven hockey team (we were the best team in the county) and was captain of the basketball team. I won colours for all sports. The only time in 5 years that I ever missed participating enthusiastically in PE lessons was the three weeks after breaking my arm - playing hockey.

I can still see my mother's face when she read that.

My ds got a written report right up till he left in 5th year this was only last year

Shot in the dark, but there's no way they have time for that. They spend half their time writing up misdemeanors for badly behaved kids and how they handled the behaviour etc. they're on a hiding to nothing.

@sheflieswithherownwings

If you want to support your child outside school then there are a number of options that you can use to try to get information:

Most schools have the curriculum (so what is being taught in all the subjects) either on their website or emailed to parents at the start of the year. You can check that to see what he is being taught - so for example fractions in maths or Charles dickens in English

All schools will assess the students regularly. Your child will know what tests he is sitting and when. Most schools will also flag ahead of time - so for example science will say we are having a test before Easter it will cover the topics we have done so far this term. Some schools will also provide a revision homework.

You can also look at his book. Some schools don't allow exercise books home because they never come back again, but your son can take photos of it no problem. He will have work he has done on his book and while it will not all have been marked (eg in maths we often read out answers and get students to mark their own) at least some of it will have been marked.

Most schools now have a big focus on feedback to the student so they know what they need to do to improve. So either in his normal books or in a "test" book will be all of his assessments with detailed feedback from the teacher.

Very few parents are actually in a position to support their child's learning, whether due to time or the fact that even the brightest and best educated parent won't know all the content the school is teaching.

So if you want him to do better, there are a few things that actually make a difference:

English: daily reading
Maths: daily maths on something like mathletics that adjusts the difficulty
MFL: app like Duolingo or similar

My kids' school still does written reports alongside the effort grade and the achievement grade (and the exam prediction grade if they are in years 10/11 or 12/13). Each teacher writes a paragraph and then the personal tutor also writes a paragraph (and in sixth form the head of sixth form also writes a section).

My twins left school pre covid - their reports were pretty meaningless tbh - they had written reports but a lot of the comments on both reports were the same so obviously copied and pasted!

Kids are told how they can improve their work, otherwise how would any of them progress and get good exam grades?
If your ds is getting low grades for behaviour and he really doesn't know why, and youve never been told, I'd ask at parents evening or phone if I were you. If he gets good behaviour grades you don't need to. Same with his work.
By the time mine were doing A levels, I wouldn't have understood what mine needed to do to improve in Maths etc, even if I'd been told in a report. They were told though and did well.

I would disagree with your supporting a child's learning tbh. It takes many forms, even if you haven't a notion about chemistry or whatever, you can sit and and learn with them. And even better, let them teach you, they love that feeling 😁