School report: Do you think this is worth the paper it’s not printed on?

[JustEatTheOneInTheBallPit]

My daughter is in year 8 and her school reports contain basically no information about her academic progress.

The report consists of 3 columns, entitled: “Organisation”; “Respect”; and “Engagement in Learning”.
Subjects are in rows and so each subject receives a score for each column. That is to say, I can go down the list to English and then across the columns to see how much my daughter respects the subject.
The “how much” is depicted by a number - 1 to 4, where 1 is seriously under performing and 4 is excelling. (3 is average.)

There are no words or other descriptors on the report, other than her name, form and attendance.

I am not so out-of-touch that I can’t understand why these reports need to be stripped back. Not only are teachers very over-stretched, but they are almost certainly subject to an onslaught of angry parents, if they say too much.

My daughter’s numerical scores are reflective of my expectations of her. I have not received a page of 1s, when I thought she was a solid 4. I would like to think most of us know where our children are at and nothing in the report should come as a huge surprise.

That being said - is there any value to this sort of report at all?? Is this not the absolute definition of a box ticking exercise?

From this report, I cannot tell whether my little darling is very good at creative writing, but struggling with spelling. Or whether she works well alone but is terrible as part of a team. Similarly, I do not see words such as “pleasure to teach” or “settled in well”, which might put my mind at ease, when I see that she’s been not herself lately and I wonder if it might be something to do with school.

And, to boil it down to its most basic, the report doesn’t actually seem to have a column that identifies academic attainment. Respect, Organisation, and Engagement are sufficiently wishy-washy that we can coast right over any blockers-to-her-learning that might be there.

For context - there is no parents evening in tandem with this report, at my daughter’s school. The summer report is exactly the same, but you can book to meet up to 6 teachers around Easter.

AIBU to think that these reports are actually now so irrelevant that they might want to retire them altogether?
When I was a child, a report was often the only printed update that my parents received all year. They relied on it to determine that I had been attending all of my lessons, staying on top of my homework, and keeping up with the syllabus.

Now, I can log into an app that gives me this information minute-by-minute.

Interested to hear from other parents as well as teachers.

Do you / would you find this report valuable? Is it now a waste of time? Are your child’s school reports like this too? What is it like to be the staff generating this report?

AIBU to think this report is sort of useless?

OK well I know they get 7 periods per week free, plus they have fewer pupils. According to friends who teach state secondary that's more than they get. Every school is different and I was only referring to our school, not applying that blanket rule across all schools.

I think you should ask. Send an email to the head of year or the form tutor and ask when and how you will received some information on her academic attainment. At the very least, you should have got something at the end of year 7. DS had a bunch of assessments in the weeks before half term which I assume will give me some info in his next report in November.

I think as long as you get a full report later in the year and a proper parents’ evening then it’s ok but it sounds like you don’t so no, it’s pretty useless

It's preliminary, it's to give you a rough idea of where she is at now.

There'll be at least one more indepth report this academic year.

As you have access to assessments online then you only need the Attitude to Learning scores

Parents that don't have access to the app etc can notify the school and request those scores are sent out on a hardcopy, but I assume you haven't actually enquired with the school if that is possible. 99% of people have some sort of device to access the internet but alternatives will be made to those that need them.

@Singleandproud It does not matter how the ratings are accessed, it’s not enough if this is the content at the end of the year. The government says parents should receive more info. Not just scores on attitude to learning.

@TizerorFizz but the OP says that attainment grades are available online, therefore she has that information it is just separate from the ATL.

Sounds pretty useless. Do you get anything abiut attainment?

This provides you with whether she arrives in lesson on time, with her equipment and her homework done (organisation), whether she is polite and well behaved in and out of class to both staff and other students (respect) and whether she contributes to lessons, listens well, follows instructions, works well in groups and alone and asks appropriate questions (engagement). It covers everything - and the summative assessments at the end of the year will give her actual attainment, it's too early for those now.

The actual work in getting a hundred teachers to complete the data drops on time, creating the aspects and results sets, building the reports and then running them, checking the results and then exporting the XML files is hours and hours. The only difference is that you aren't getting a generic phrase to imply exactly the same things - something far harder for many parents to understand - you're getting a number to represent from A Pleasure to Teach - Well Done! (4) to You Know This Isn't a Surprise, as the Head of Year is already in contact with you on an at least weekly basis about their behaviour and absence of homework (1).

@Singleandproud You need to read what the government says. This is clearly for the annual report but it’s not just about grades. It also requires “general progress”, and “achievement highlighting strengths and developmental needs”. I fully accept a snapshot of a grade is available but that is not an end of year report. The OP says she did not get one last year following the requirements set out by the Government. This is wrong but in October you obviously would not expect this. It’s a shame schools no longer value a good dialogue with parents.

Yes. I think its pointless and probably takes the teacher as much time as something g more useful.

We used to get told if our child was on target to meet their target. But they couldn't share what the target was due to reasons.

Absolutely pointless. I send my kids to school to get an academic education, not to 'respect' the subject - what does that even mean? I'm sure the teachers roll their eyes at the reports too.

I think what the OP means is that she has the info in the report also available online, what she's missing is the attainment grade which she has not received since her child started at the school in Y7. I find that a bit shocking if I've understood correctly.

My children's secondary school, the first report of the year is about behaviour, effort and homework, but doesn't report back on attainment. The rest of the reports also look at attainment, and will look at improvements since the previous report.

Teacher - I think YA(prob)NBU. Though the format of your DD's school report sounds particularly unhelpful. At my old school we used to put whether we thought the student was above, below or on target for their target grade based on reading age (then refined for GCSE). We'd also put effort, homework and essentially attitude/behaviour.

My current school we have a system that works out their average grade based on assessments, though grades at KS3 are school-specific ones. And we can give a number to indicate attitude/effort/behaviour, if it's a low one we can log some reasons as to why.

I do think given we use apps with daily updates on behaviour, both positive and negative, there's not enormous merit in reports versus parents' evenings, but it could flag an issue that parents who don't check the apps or have contact home because any behaviour, effort or organisation issues might not be aware of.

I think that's very poor if all reports are like that. My DC have all left school now but we used to get numerical reports twice a year, except like a PP they had attitude to learning, current attainment and target grade. However we got a full written report once a year, at the end of the year in the lower years and at more relevant times such as after mocks/just before parents' evening from year 10 upwards. To be honest, there was still a lot of copy and pasting in the lower years as obviously report writing is time consuming and a lot of the pupils will genuinely be similar. But from year 10 up and particularly in 6th form there was a lot of individual feedback and advice.
I think the numerical reports are OK for a quick check on things but not as the sole means of communication with parents.

I was a database manager in a secondary school. When we introduced reports like this some (lazy) teachers used to flood fill the whole spread sheet with 2s or 3s. One absolute SOB used to do the same but put 1s for every student he taught.

That being said, we did also have an attainment column where the teachers had to enter the students current KS level based on marked classwork.

That’s poor. Our school provides 3 a year, except in Y11. 2 of the 3 are the numbered grids that yours is. The third(or second in Ys 9&11) is the full written report. The schedule in Y9 is different - the Feb/March one is the detailed one to inform GCSE option choices. There are only two in Y11 and 13.

I hate this report style! My DDs was worse as it was things like from 1-5 she is 4.2, 4.7, 3.9 in a million categories - it felt totally meaningless and what on earth does it mean? Helpfulness with other 4.6, resilience, 4.7, independent work 4.8, zest 4.1.....

It shows nothing about the kids as a person, their strengths or learning styles and how on earth do you move from 4.6 to 5? What are their targets?

I moved her school in part because this was nonsense and did not help her progress

Dd received something similar. For me, this is a quick report to show how the child is doing in terms of effort and attitude and gives the caregivers / parents the space to encourage those, who aren’t trying hard enough and praise the ones, who are etc. It could be argued this is motivational because it isn’t dependent on grade and therefore everyone has the opportunity to get good grades on this report. However, I don’t agree with the end of year report being in the same format. They were like this at dd’s former school, which imo weren’t terribly useful as an end of year report.

I have found the reporting of how my kids are doing at secondary absolutely awful. Three reports a year with a list of numbers like OP. They have included a target grade band but it's very wide (e.g. 4-6 or 7-9). One parents evening a year where many teachers aren't available. Just had a year 10 parents evening where many teachers said that as they didn't do SATs then they can't tell what grades they might get or if they are on target. They have been at the school three full years! Won't see a teacher in person until year 11 now. I don't understand how I am supposed to know if there are subjects I need to find them extra support in with this little info.

I stopped reading my child’s reports. It’s as if the teachers don’t even know the kids. At this point I’m only interested in 2 things - is she happy and is she failing. For a few years the answers were basically No and Yes 🤣