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?

AllProperTealsTheft

Im sorry you think im suggesting teachers are lying, im not!

Im trying to understand, lots of older teachers often say the workload has got much worse, but whats changed? There's always been parents evening and marking etc, im trying to understand the shift lots of teachers suggest has made workload etc markedly worse over the last 20 years etc

What are the new things that didn't exist 20 yrs ago that mean teachers are busier etc so don't run clubs and in many schools don't write reports the way they did etc

Parents could be a huge force to argue for changes to help reduce teaching workload but teachers put answers like this whenever we ask for information

Well look up the national curricular - it’s online and a step by step guide to each terms learning objectives -

Get some knowledge in phonics and help your child to read.

Het some maths games and help your child with numbers.

I hear so many parents dumbing down kids language ‘2 more sleeeps’ when was that a thing?

Count in halves and quarters, talk about time - not nearly bed time - it’s 5 to 7, or quarter past 8 and time for bed.

@Myotheripodisayoto There are lots of teacher threads that you can go on to see teacher workload. There’s one currently running called “burnt out teacher”.

Hi - I'm an English teacher currently writing year 11 reports...

Here are some answers to your questions:

Most schools don't write full reports anymore because teachers do not have time. On a standard week (a non reporting week) my days are as follows: Get to work at 7.45 and start photocopying and adapting resources for individual students; teach pretty much all day (I have about 10 minutes to eat lunch usually due to clubs/support sessions etc); I have a couple of free periods a week - if those are not taken for cover, I am usually replying to parent emails, meeting with A Level students for Coursework sessions or planning. I leave to go home about 5-5.30. I spend about 2 hours with my kids and then start my marking/planning about 7.30-8 and work until 11-12. I work about 8 hours over the weekend.

On report weeks, I also do this but add another day's work onto the weekend.

We have so much more to do than when I started teaching almost 20 years ago. Adapting lessons for individuals, constantly having to record and write up conversations and meetings after they have occured. Plus, the actual feedback we give throughout the year is so much more detailed. I have my old GCSE and A Level folders - a short comment and a mark was all I got back then. My classes get about an A4 side of typed feedback for exams and assessments.

I always make the reports I write individual as, like you, I think it is important - but the profession is on its knees and teachers are quitting in droved. Even I am looking to end a career I love because I no longer think it's possible to do the job well even if you give it everything. This year has broken me - and the comments I see about teachers online are crushing.

Things added to our workload that didn't use to exist:
Emails (so many emails), photocopying (and trimming) for different needs, putting resources online in advance, putting notes taken during lessons online after the lessons, sending work to students who are unable to come in, calling parents about very minor things, filling in online forms about conversations had with pupils/parents (about 5 of these a day), setting homework online (and making sure that it can be understood by parents who weren't in the lesson otherwise they complain), giving detailed written feedback on work, endless online training videos to watch, lots and lots of meetings about wellbeing. Probably some more I've forgotten.

This graph should help to give some context. We're doing the same job as ever (albeit with a rising tide of extra safeguarding and pastoral needs) but with fewer people.

Things added to our workload that didn't use to exist:
Emails (so many emails), photocopying (and trimming) for different needs, putting resources online in advance, putting notes taken during lessons online after the lessons, sending work to students who are unable to come in, calling parents about very minor things, filling in online forms about conversations had with pupils/parents (about 5 of these a day), setting homework online (and making sure that it can be understood by parents who weren't in the lesson otherwise they complain), giving detailed written feedback on work, endless online training videos to watch, lots and lots of meetings about wellbeing. Probably some more I've forgotten.

Thank you for sharing, this is very helpful. I do try & avoid emailing school as i know this adds to the work.

@MyotheripodisayotoThere are lots of teacher threads that you can go on to see teacher workload. There’s one currently running called “burnt out teacher”.

Thank you, i will have a look

I got out last year - now work in an office where my skill set has been really useful and transferable.

I had Christmas party and team lunch paid for including taxi home, I had a well-being breakfast, we’ve had team building activities and days out doing charity work. I’ve just been paid a high bonus as we’ve met our targets.

I work 9-5 and can do overtime at x2 salary.

I get a company contribution to my pension.

We also get free tea and coffee which teachers have to pay for.

We recently had an afternoon celebration of results which was a free bar and food.

I already got a £12,000 pay rise to join the company .

I no longer deal with kids refusing to come out from under the desk/come in from play.

I no longer deal with parents shouting the odds that little Daisy has lost her PE kit and somehow it’s my fault.

Im off to spend my bonus!! Couldn’t be happier.

Scarletttulips

This sounds a million times better than most office jobs including mine!

Where do you work/what do you do?!

I'm an ex teacher - was in education for 20 years - so I will try to explain what has added to the workloads.

For example, assessment and marking.

When I started we'd do a Friday end of week test to see if the class had remembered what they'd been taught. I'd say the questions and then read out the answers. Later after the lesson I'd check their books to get a sense of who had understood and who hadn't.

Now those assessments are formalised. So I only do them every two weeks, but the questions have to be on paper (so I have to write them in advance and photocopy them all). I can't just read out the answers. Instead I have to mark all of them myself, and then give feedback.

The feedback needs to be in a particular colour pen, and needs to say something the kid got right, something the kid got wrong, and then tell them how to improve.

So for example I might write:
Well done, you can find half of a number. You struggled to find a quarter of a number. To improve, remember that a quarter is half of a half so if you want to find a quarter you can find the half twice.

Then I need to write a question that they can respond to to show they have made progress.

So I would write find a quarter of 16.

Next lesson, the kids all need to read the feedback I have written and respond (in a different coloured pen) to the improve question.

My books are checked every half term to make sure I am doing this, and if this is not in the exercise books for my classes I will be put on an improvement plan - so I do have to do this.

So what was a simple test which did not take up a lot of time now takes masses and masses of time.

In addition, senior management get really upset if the kids have got the improve question wrong, or if (horror of horrors) and kids were away when you did the improve task.

So prior to the book scrutiny you need to spend time in class making sure every kid has got every improve question right.

And that sort of thing has happened everywhere. That is why workload is up,

@Myotheripodisayoto

I'm happy to try and answer this question.

On my full time timetable I had 4 PPA periods a fortnight. This amounted to 2.5 hours allocated for all planning, prep and assessment. Usually one of these each week was used to organise my practical prep for the following week (secondary science) including practicing and experiments that I was a bit rusty with.

I have to have up to date annotated seating plans for each of my classes. With frequent class, seating and timetable changes these are constantly needing to be altered. The rationale is that these provide context for ofsted or cover staff.

As a form tutor I have to monitor attendance for my form group. This involves calling home each time attendance drops below a certain %, usually generating at least 3 calls home per week.

My subject is science, so I teach all three disciplines despite only having trained in one. This generates a lot of additional workload in making sure I'm up to scratch. Often I will want to speak to my colleagues about how they tackle a certain topic, which can't happen during the day because we're not free at the same time.

Twice a week we have meetings until 4:30, occasionally 5. We have 8 parents evenings a year (until 8pm each time) and are expected to call home for everyone in our tutor group once a half term. We also have to call home each time a behaviour point is logged. We also like to call home for praise, as it makes a massive difference.

We use booklets, so thankfully I don't have huge amounts of resources to create, but I do have to plan for verbal and written questioning, create model answers to share and plan to scaffold for different levels of need within the classroom. I also need to mark the work produced, plus the homework that we set. We use carousel which does do some marking but we have to trawl through and check plus make notes of common area of misconception for feedback.

Assessments are usually half termly plus mocks for year 10s, 11s and 13s. A ks3 assessment might only take an hour to mark per class. Year 11 mocks might take 3 hours per class. Sometimes a little quicker if it's physics, longer if it's biology.

We are also expected to run a club. In science this involves prep and practice of any practical, plus ordering in advance. We risk assess all of the experiments we do.

Each half term I have to do a data drop. This means taking data from assessments and adding it onto something like Go4Schools. Even though we've already entered it on dept spreadsheets.

We often have additional meetings regarding specific students, sometimes regarding medical needs to if they're underachieving or misbehaving.

We log all uniform infringements and lateness. We then have to escort students to their detentions at the end of the day. If we set a subject detention that is in our own time at lunch or after school.

We deal with safeguarding.

Honestly, it just goes on and on and on. Some schools are better than others. But the sad fact is we don't have enough staff (nationally) and workload just gets bigger and bigger every year.

If you want to know anything else, feel free to ask. I think that the scope of the job is often unknown to people unless they are or live with a teacher. Which is fair enough, I have no idea what it's like day to day in other professions.

P.S sorry if there are typos. My HoD hasn't checked this post

*I'm an ex teacher - was in education for 20 years - so I will try to explain what has added to the workloads.

For example, assessment and marking.
When I started we'd do a Friday end of week test to see if the class had remembered what they'd been taught. I'd say the questions and then read out the answers. Later after the lesson I'd check their books to get a sense of who had understood and who hadn't.

Now those assessments are formalised. So I only do them every two weeks, but the questions have to be on paper (so I have to write them in advance and photocopy them all). I can't just read out the answers. Instead I have to mark all of them myself, and then give feedback.

The feedback needs to be in a particular colour pen, and needs to say something the kid got right, something the kid got wrong, and then tell them how to improve.

So for example I might write:
Well done, you can find half of a number. You struggled to find a quarter of a number. To improve, remember that a quarter is half of a half so if you want to find a quarter you can find the half twice.

Then I need to write a question that they can respond to to show they have made progress.

So I would write find a quarter of 16.*

I can see that this is ridiculous but even worse, as parents we can't see all this useful feedback! My kids school do a termly booklook where you can your child's books but there is no marking/assessment or feedback in any of these that i can see. The only annotation are the teacher circling spellings/missing capital letters etc or writing "1m" for one merit where a piece of work is good.

If i was seeing all this helpful feedback to show me what i can help the DC with i basically wouldn't need a report at all. It seems daft that the teachers are spending all this time doing it but parents can't use that info.

I am primary, not secondary, but after our recent reports we did some checks on how many are actually being read. We send them on an online system that all parents have easy access to, it also shows us when messages sent have been read. On average less then half the parents had opened the reports to read them, 3 weeks after they were sent. They had received emails and texts to say they were there to access. In some classes as low as 30% has accessed them. When we used to print them it appeared a similar picture, when some would come back to school for weeks in book bags unopened. Some parents truly value them, but lots and lots don’t. I am always amazed, and saddened by how few parents contact me after reports go out when their child is listed as not on track and comments emphasise how far behind they are or poor attitude etc. We then as schools have to make decisions on where to then make changes to make sure the time spent on these is used in a more purposeful way. As a result we have made 2 reports a year into data reports and just write a personal comment on the end of year report. For this it is recommended we write 450-500 words per child, so your looking at 13,500 words for a class of 30. We don’t get any time given for this, it is done on top of daily workload.
I do think a huge change in workload, as so many people are asking this, is the amount of evidencing you have to do now. If you do a fun practical maths or science lesson, you now have to take photos, print them and stick them in books after. You have to write lengthy detailed plans, annotate them afterwards. All things that aren’t useful for the teacher, but instead for just in case an advisor or Ofsted comes in and sadly won’t take our word that we did a worth while experiment, but want to see the evidence instead.
Teachers love teaching, but sadly the time to do so is being taken over by admin.

I would recommend contacting your child’s teachers with any questions you have. I am always happy to answer these and you will get the information you need and it may help you understand the data report better next time.

I've been teaching for 23 years. I'm a secondary school Head of English.

Trust me, it's different now.

This week, I taught all day, on call or in meetings in my free lessons, then ran either revision, detention or a club until 4. Then sat at my desk until 6.30 doing only well-being and behaviour follow ups, phoning parents etc. Be clear - not my English teacher stuff, or my English HoD stuff. Just student behaviour and wellbeing.

Mock exam data is due in next Friday and every English teacher has around 300 essays to mark by then. I've spent the last 2 weekends marking solidly and I'm just over half way through. As soon as that's done, the Year 10s sit their mocks and it starts again.

At some point I have to plan my lessons, usually before school. The staffing crisis is so severe that I spend huge amounts of time either trying to recruit or supporting inadequate teachers, who are in post because there is literally no one else. There is at least one serious behaviour / safeguarding incident per day that generates huge amounts of follow up and investigation. My breaks and lunchtimes (30 mins) are taken up with students who need to talk. I don't turn them away.

I am good at my job. I have no time. I choose between photocopying, eating or going to the loo at breaktime. I have teenagers at home who I don't spend enough time with.

That's not close to being everything. Planning for enrichment days? Admin? Dept strategy? CPD meetings? Ordering resources? Conducting performance management observations and following up? Moderation meetings? I'd love to be able to be back in a position where we could write lovely comments, but those days are gone. I spend a lot of time phoning parents instead, including positive phone calls. It's how I cheer myself up on a Friday afternoon.

I was busy as an NQT 23 years ago, but there was a wealth of experienced teachers out there then and now I work with kids who are not OK, in a system where tens of thousands of those strong teachers have left. I know a lot of jobs are hard but if you are genuinely trying to understand, please think about the effect some of the comments on this thread may have on the many teachers like me, who care desperately and have to read over and over again that we don't.

The entire education system needs an overhaul, and reports are just a system of a much larger problem. So you’re not being unreasonable, but with the system as it currently exists, it wouldn’t make enough of a difference, so why bother,

Im trying to understand, lots of older teachers often say the workload has got much worse, but whats changed?

Ok. I'm an older teacher, and it's changed beyond recognition since I started. Here are some of the things that have increased our workload:

A general increase in the level of what a normal lesson should be like. More interactive, more use of tech, more differentiated, more ways to asses progress within each lesson etc.

Increased expectations of differentiation and extra provision for the vastly increasing number of students with additional needs.

The constant need for evidence and data, which creates a lot of admin tasks.

A constant deluge of updates and requests from SLT, SENCO and pastoral staff relating to individual pupils (I teach almost 300). On any given day I will get maybe 6 to 10 of these. Some 'just' require me to remember something important (sometimes even life-or-death) about a pupil's mental state or medical condition. Many will require me to actually do something, like change a seating plan, provide immediate feedback about progress, start implementing a particular strategy to help that student, or meet with the student to discuss something. I forgot to tweak a seating plan a couple of weeks ago and instantly had people on my back about it.

Increased expectations from students that you will be available at all times and that you will do absolutely anything to help them.

The general assumption (by kids, parents and SLT) that kids' progress and grades are down to the teacher, not the students, even though the fact remains that you can lead a horse to water but you can'take it drink. This is partly what makes teachers overwork.

Yes, there are lots of resources available online, but they need finding and often tweaking. No two classes are the same from year to year. It's never as simple as just reusing the same lesson plans.

The lack of admin support due to low budgets.

The masive increase in admin and paperwork for things like school trips.

The pressure to constantly reflect on your own teaching and introduce new strategies and methods which are presented in CPD sessions. Some of these are genuinely interesting. Most are unnecessarily reinventing the wheel.

I'm head of a subject (within a department), so I have quite a vit of additional admin to do for that, which has also increased compared with when I had the same responsibility earlier in my career.

I'm sure there's more. The point is that all the stuff teachers used to do stull has to be done, but it feels like there's less and less time to do it. I most like being in the classroom, but increasingly I keep thinking 'God, if only I didn't have to actually teach all day, I could maybe get to the bottom of my to-do list!'

My yr 13 daughter still gets full written reports

I think the thing parents need to understand is that (independent sector aside), they are not the schools' customers.

The (ridiculous, unwieldy) data gathering is for Ofsted, SLT, the academy chain bosses etc. And those are the people who determine the reputation of the school. Funding comes from central government via the councils, generally via an academy chain.

It will be interesting to see what happens as school rolls fall though. Peak birth year was 2012 so that cohort reach secondary this September. Fewer kids could mean schools have to work harder to attract parents.

Yep, and everything @IHeartKingThistle said too.

I am a very experienced teacher and I work in a lovely school with well-behaved kids and lovely colleagues. I'm also not easily upset or rattled. I am barely keeping my head above water, have spent this week often on the verge of tears, and have not been teaching my best. My HoD is stepping down and nobody within my department will apply. I am the obvious choice, but I am worried that any increase in workload will break me, so I'm not doing it. How people manage when they are also firefighting awful behaviour, I have no idea.

Did you ever look at other people's reports to 99% was copy and paste

@AllProperTeaIsTheft ❤️

Increased expectations of differentiation and extra provision for the vastly increasing number of students with additional needs

This one is interesting as from the perspective of a parent with a child who is more able, the differentiation in primary has reduced. The school reading scheme now is that the whole class must be on the same reading level, the only exceptions seem to be a couple of children who cannot access the books at all and are on an intervention programme. This meant my son (a fluent reader) was not allowed to move beyond the purple book band during year 1. The maths curriculum is set at a level the lower abilities can access and offers zero challenge at all for more able. As child i was sent to a group with other children to do harder maths games etc, this sort of opportunity no longer seems to exist.

Perhaps this is due to the explosion of SEN in mainstream and the need to focus differentiation on children with learning and behavioural needs.

😞 This is such a common thing to hear these days and it is so sad. I've seen colleagues who I always thought were totalled 'unflappable' sobbing in staff rooms several times this year. Every single one of my department has cried this year. We give so so much of ourselves. 😟

*I think the thing parents need to understand is that (independent sector aside), they are not the schools' customers.

The (ridiculous, unwieldy) data gathering is for Ofsted, SLT, the academy chain bosses etc. And those are the people who determine the reputation of the school. Funding comes from central government via the councils, generally via an academy chain.*

This is true. I think academisation has worsened things considerably for both teachers and children/their parents.

And what @RNMR88 said! If I had a fiver for every exam year student who asks what they should do to improve, when the conversation then reveals they haven't done <any> of what's already been recommended...