Sons school report refers to ‘she’

[Shinysal]

My son has almost completed his first year in secondary school and received his report card. Each teacher has completed a page and he has 12 different subjects. 3 seperate teachers have referred to him as ‘she’ and one has done it through out the update.

The music teacher has put the wrong instrument and marks against his test according to my son.

The overall report is very very good so just wondering am I being unreasonable to be disappointed that the teachers have not proof read it but I do appreciate they are busy and have lots of kids. Just concerned that they might not even be for the right child!?

That would still be 30 x the number of subjects they do.

I teach over 100 students and I’m only part time. Imagine writing a page per student and proofreading them all and filling out the data as well. That’s just for one subject, all their other subject teachers are writing a page too. Luckily we have scrapped written reports.

Even if I only proofread my form’s reports, I’ve still got all the others to write.

Gosh, the amount of hours that must have gone into the process in total 🙈

The way I see it, there's only so much time. So we can choose to spend it on a reporting cycle, or we can choose to spend it on improving lessons, offering feedback, or providing support sessions for those pupils who are struggling. I'm not saying there's not a place for reports - feedback to parents about pupils' progress is important - but the amount of hours that must be spent on reporting per year in each school (and the country as a whole) at the expense of T&L is sickening.

As a parent of two little boys in private school, I'm quite sad about how much time their teachers spend on reporting their progress to me as I would rather that time was spent with my boys, or planning lessons or activities for them instead. I know they think parents want it - and I'm sure many do - but I'm not sure if that many parents stop to consider that everything comes at a cost.

When DS1 was in high school many years ago, we went to the school for parents’ night and one of the teachers referred to DS as “she” during a meeting and used a female version of his name - similar to Andrew and Andrea.

This teacher had had DS in his class for a year. DS looked like a boy and this was long before being trans was on the radar in schools.

The teacher did have the decency to be embarrassed when we pointed out DS was a boy.

As long as the reports were grammatically correct, my school would have just ignored and TBH honest if a school that I worked at asked me to rewrite the reports and they were grammatically correct. I would refuse.

Exactly this.

I wish we'd scrapped written reports too. We still write two per pupil per year. That's hundreds of reports to write per teacher... and hours upon hours spent proofreading. The time would be SO much more valuable spent elsewhere, for the pupils' benefit!

I’d find this very disappointing. It’s part of the job to identify a pupil and give a succinct but accurate account in their report.

And what is the first rule when complaining about teacher's spelling and grammar on a thread that talks about proof reading?

I have been sitting on my hands about that post 😂😂😂

I worry about the attitude: 'if there I a problem teachers will have got in touch with you'

I feel it represents such a firefighting attitude to education: all that is expected is the minimum to satisfy whatever targets have been set ... no interest children being stretched to reach their potential.

So sad.

😁😂

@ sodabreadjam -
“This teacher had had DS in his class for a year. DS looked like a boy and this was long before being trans was on the radar in schools.
The teacher did have the decency to be embarrassed when we pointed out DS was a boy.”

This reminded me of the time when I went to a parents’ evening with my twins - they used to take it in turns to come with me - and I got the report for one twin, and I said, so how’s her twin sister doing? The teacher said, “There are two of them?” They weren’t even in the same class!! My daughter had to point out that her sister was in the other class (different days) and I don’t think the teacher actually believed us until she checked the register. And yes, she was embarrassed.

Blame a system that overstretches and destroys teachers health and wellbeing. and parents that just get abusive.

Teachers no longer have the time to contact parents about the good stuff, I used to do it a lot until I got berated, abused and threatened by a parent, I didn't even get a chance to say what I had rung up for.

They will have used a template and have forgotten to check the pronouns, I expect. I would ask the music teacher if they know who your son is.

I taught a class with one twin from two identical twins.
In my other class where the other two twins.
In my cases it was very confusing as both sets of twins were called Sam and Max (names changed) and Max and Sam (names still changed)
It was confusing as hell for the first two weeks/four lessons.

No wonder a teacher filmed us once saying our names on film

I can see why the sheer quantity of typos in the report stood out to you - I'm sure you wouldn't be posting on here if it was just one or two.

A lot of schools have moved away from sending written reports at all now, and I can understand why....

If you reach one or the core subjects (as I do), it's not too bad, you will only have probably maximum 30 reports to write in each year group.

But pity the poor teachers or subjects like drama and music, who are likely to teach at least half of the year group at KS3, if not more - upwards of 120 reports in each year in many cases.

And these reports are about students they see once a week, for an hour.

How much detail can they reasonably be expected to go into about each individual child, in fairness.

My perspective as a parent is that, basically, I want to know whether my child is behaving, working hard, and understanding each subject. And a numerical grading system can tell me that.

Any more detail is superfluous really. For the subjects I am able to help her with, I can look at her book/speak to her and find out what specific areas she needs my help with.

For the subjects I can't help her with, I can't, and no amount of written report will make me able to......

When I have had to write reports in the past, I truly don't think it was a good use of my time - I feel the hours spent would have been more beneficial to the kids if I had used them for planning lessons, organising additional enrichment, reading around my subject etc etc.

Maybe it's worth only requesting five reports, but in depth? I couldn't give a fuck how my kid is getting on in drama, arts or sports

When I have had to write reports in the past, I truly don't think it was a good use of my time - I feel the hours spent would have been more beneficial to the kids if I had used them for planning lessons, organising additional enrichment, reading around my subject etc etc.

I couldn't agree more.

When I was teaching, we definitely used copy and paste on reports, but our head teacher was very very hot on making sure we used the right pronouns throughout the report so that this wouldn't happen. Sounds like the proofreading wasn't thorough enough

Not read the full thread but just to say it might not even be down to the individual teachers. It could be the software or programme used to put the reports together. Often comment banks and tick boxes are used and then the report is generated so it might be an error from when it was generated rather than what the teacher actually wrote/ticked.

The problem with not giving "a fuck how my kid is getting on in drama, arts or sports" is that the children of these parents pick up on it and cause behavioural issues in the class.

In the majority of schools, reports are all written in the teacher's own time, outside of teaching and preparation time. The deadline is tight and, sadly, there are only so many hours in a day. So errors do slip in.

Writing reports is really time consuming when it comes to trying to write something original for each child and you can find yourself writing waffle, so a couple of years ago at my school we all sat and made a statement bank that covered all aspects, so for example sentence one was about punctuality, two confidence, three homework (can’t remember the actual aspects). Each sentence had maybe 4 options from them being perfect to the opposite and then we had them for each gender. It’s made the reports so much better because all areas are included for all children so each parent was getting more accurate information - in some special cases they had to be completely written from scratch if a child didn’t fit. It sounds like they might do similar and have copied from the wrong column. It’s annoying for you and if the teacher realises they will be annoyed at themselves too.

Ours does it and changes the name, although I prefer to write personal reports if I can, but sometimes time is bonkers tight.

So funny 😁 😂