To expect DS's scholl report to be written in english?

[Clumsymum]

I mean correct english, with proper sentences, paragraphs that are all in the same tense, and an approximately correct use of puntuation.

One section(knowledge of the world) doesn't make sense at all.

These are all supposed to be checked by the headteacher before they come out to us too!!

I'm a school governor, and having just read the report, I'm inches away from writing a complaint.

Everyone makes mistakes, but if I made that many in one report I would be expected to explain myself.

Oh I make mistakes all right. But, I am receptive to feedback when I've made mistakes (I have to be) and I try to learn from them. Oh and they cost me.

The disconnect that alarmed me in your posts, Harpsi, is your idea that teachers do not answer to anyone, should not receive feedback and therefore should continue to make the same mistakes for ever. If a teacher is particularly bad, then presumably there is no possibility of reprieve for the parents or children until the teacher retires?

What many?

"And I apologise now for my odd typo, but promise you that nothing goes out to a client, nor any communications to school, without being proof-read and spell-checked first.

Which is the minimum I expect in a professional communication. "

Oh well, better tell my 98th percentile IQ dyslexic daughter never to consider a professional career and aim her sights firmly at a MacDonalds franchise I suppose!

"The disconnect that alarmed me in your posts, Harpsi, is your idea that teachers do not answer to anyone, should not receive feedback and therefore should continue to make the same mistakes for ever. If a teacher is particularly bad, then presumably there is no possibility of reprieve for the parents or children until the teacher retires? "

you are talking bollocks. As I have already said we are forced to use software, select from statement banks and it is all checked by our line managers/SMT

What the OP is describing is symptomatic of the whole system - we are not allowed to exercise our professional judgment.

Parents expect these in depth, shitty, meaningless bits of tripe instead of an apposite " Little Johnny won't sit still or listen and that's why he can't count to ten"

That's some generalisation about parents, lowenergylightbulb.

Does the software not allow for any editing once the statements have been selected?

At my school in Oz, we do use statement banks because the government stipulate so much about what must be written that we have little time to write the real stuff.

One thing we do, though is to ensure every single report is read by someone else, corrections put in, and handed back to the writer for revision, before they go out. This means very report is printed twice!! So much for the paperless office.

Fora is 'wankers' Latin'. HTH.

As for reports, I don't, personally, believe that it's acceptable to churn out guff which means bugger all to parents. God knows I'm forever haranguing the kids about being aware of purpose & audience when they're writing!

We have report software (a free download, which incidentally sorts out pronoun gender so NO excuse for that ghastly 'they').

I don't use it myself; I just do good/average/poor reports, male version, then female versions, then stick all six on the Office clipboard.

I then use them as a template/starting point - because it gives me time to ensure that there is a genuinely specific comment on the student's work. The 'target' is always specific & based on his/her recent work, not comment bank waffle.

The examples given by the OP are poor - YES, there is always going to be a substantial level of cutting & pasting, realistically, but you then personalise it & make sure it actually makes sense!

I don't see it as a lack of respect or support for teachers to point out the errors in these reports. Quite the opposite. It would not be supportive to ignore the problem and to allow the teachers to carry on sending out badly written reports and risk losing the respect of the other parents. I am also a school governor and I would say something. In our school I am pretty sure that they would take it on board and make more of an effort next time. They positively encourage us to show ways in which they can improve and they are not complacent. However I suspect, knowing how difficult it is to sack them, some teachers do become complacent about their role and I wonder if this teacher is one of those.

Blaming the software is a bit lame. I used to be an accountant and the statutory accounts were generated by computer software. Nobody would dream of sending out a set of accounts without them being called and cast and then proof read several times. There were never less than 3 reviews on any set of accounts. If one did get out of the door with so much as a £ in the wrong place or a full stop missing there would be runctions. And rightly so; it damages professional reputations to be lax over standards. If teachers want to be regarded as professionals (as they are entitled to be), they can't afford to to think these things don't matter.

""C has a real sense of the wider world and their place in it as well as how they can continue to do so as they move through life"

I have to agree that this does not make sense. There are words missing at the very least but even if you put them it would need rewriting. Looks like the beginning of one sentence and the end of another added together to me.

I started off thinking it's fine if you sort out that dreadful use of 'they' as a third person singular pronoun (which free software will do - plain lazy & unnecessary to use they/their).

'C has a real sense of the wider world and his place in it, as well as how he can continue to do so, as he moves through life'

You don't even, technically, need the commas for it to make perfectly acceptable grammatical sense - they're helpful, though.

But - 'do so'? Do what? OK, obviously it means something like '...how he can continue to occupy/be aware of his place in it...', but, well, really.

As opposed to what? Becoming a figment of his own imagination? It's all far too sci-fi, frankly.

Also, it's just utter woo, isn't it?

Pedantic types will descend gleefully on it whilst parents whose own reading skills, or English, are limited, won't make head nor tail of it.

Agree with Niecie - the teacher may have written it, but it certainly doesn't appear that he/she has read it.

I've just got my own dc's primary reports, & sure, I can see the cut & paste joins, but overall I have a coherent & reasonably specific understanding of what their teachers think of their attainments, behaviour & future targets - which, to me, is the purpose of the document.

I just want to make clear that schools do not have to send out jargon packed bland reports that are cut and paste jobs. We simply type into word what needs saying and call a spade a spade.

As someone who proof reads reports I send back any that are jargon packed or contain a series of statement bank points. We also send back generic reports, each child should have a cohesive highly personal report that tells parents what they need to know.

My daughter's school reports are awful bank statement bland affairs. We send them back to th headmistress with a letter of complaint. Pleas about having other things to do etc don't wash as I manage myself. It is one of the things DH is tackling ad a governor .

so DO you get to edit the reports after the statements are pasted in?

I don't really understand why statement banks are used. surely if you do it properly and go through checking it, changing words so it makes sense etc, it's so much faff that you may as well have just WRITTEN the damn thing yourself?

I don't see why I should 'take the reports with a pinch of salt' TBH. I don't think it's too much to ask for, to get q personal account of how my child is doing.

and yes I know my MN posts are full of errors etc (often because I have DS on my boob!) - but I know when grammar really matters. I churned out grammatically perfect essays week after week in college. I agree it's about context. reports should be at least mostly free of errors.

WTF are they doing 3 page reports on infants for anyway? My sons school report was a folded a4 photocopy with loads of boxes to tick under maths/english/irish etc (which he got all 5's; exceptional ), and a 3 line hand written comment. Thats it. What more would you need?

3 Page reports! Mine run to 6 pages, by the time I've written personal statements, achievements, contributions to school life, reading, writing, speaking and listening comments with targets for all the above, overall numeracy, number work, mental maths skills, using and applying comments, again with targets, science , ICT, RE, PE and other curriculum comments, class teacher and head teacher comments, pupil comments ( which the children write and I have to type in), attendance figures and levels against expected levels for reading, writing, speaking and listening, numeracy and science.
And not a piece of software in sight, in fact it is only in the last few years that we have been able to word process them, before that they were all handwritten.

primarymum - maybe you're just using bigger handwriting

We have a specific font size we are allowed to use, no bigger than 10 ( although I will admit to superfluous paragraphs just to take up room

I'd send it back with all the mistakes and incomprehensible phrases underlined in red and say..."could try harder"

I like Eurostar's idea.

I'm appalled that teachers should resort to a database of basic phrases when writing a school report.

So much for "Every Child Matters" if even end of year reports demonstrate no acknowledgement of the individual.

For a long time I've wondered why my DDs reports were so terse and automaton-like. Like the OP, I too have seen some dreadful and very basic errors of syntax and grammar.

Now that I know why, I'm still shaking my head in amazement.

primarymum, I thought there was some ruling somewhere that stated that all communications sent out from school had to be a minimum of font size 12? Possibly 11, but 10 is certainly on the small side for people with sight issues.

Anyway, I digress. It REALLY hacks me off, having spent hours composing, writing and editing my reports so they are perfect, as well as proof-reading a colleague's, to hear of others giving the profession a bad name by sending out the sort of nonsense the OP has received. It gives us all a bad name.

In ds's last school report he had one sentence that said how careful and detailed he was when drawing science diagrams and in the very next sentence it said he had to take more care when drawing science diagrams.

I hate the fact that we get school reports on the last day of term so no opportunity to speak to the teacher about it. Other schools I know seem to issue them a couple of weeks before the end of term which gives parents time to discuss with the teacher if there are any concerns.

Next time either DD brings home an automaton-written report I shall send it back with the errors corrected (in red ink!) and a request for a new report which might reassure me that teachers can write and think for themselves.

exactly clam - not all teachers do this, which makes it more upsetting/annoying that some do get away with it. especially when they aren't even checked to see if they make sense! or even refer to the correct child

my friend spend a lot of her half term hand writing individual reports, and she's got a weird wrist problem which means she gets very sore (hence it taking so long) - but she still did it, and enjoyed thinking about the progress all her pupils made. she wouldn't dream of using stock phrases, I reckon.

here's a question - if you're a teacher in a school that uses these databases, are you allowed to refuse to use them? I'm hoping to be a primary teacher and I'd like to think that I'd write proper, personal reports for each child - or would I be forced to use copy 'n' paste?

spent not spend