What style are your school reports?

[roisin]

The boys (13 and 15) have always had personalised, individual comments that made it clear teacher knows them as individuals.

But new HT has introduced these ridiculous new reports. Lots of figures and data: eg for each subject SIX! different commitment grades covering things like uniform, punctuality, etc.

But the only comments are highly impersonalised and boring:
"To improve further Mr Bland has set the following targets for miniroisin.."

I find the new reports mindlessly dull and unhelpful; certainly not the pleasurable read they used to be.

I gave verbal feedback to SMT after ds1's report; ds2's - 4 months later was similarly dull. I spoke to some individual class teachers about it. Most said they didn't like the new reports either; some - but not all - said they were slightly quicker to write.

I would rather have just two personalised sentences than all the nonsense and data. (We know the data anyway as they get grades and so on regularly.)

So what are your reports like?

We get both
Two progress reports a year - all numbers

and a proper written report , although that can be anytime november and july depending what year they are so that teachers don't have to write a whole schools worth in one go.

DD goes to a huge high school. Her reports are simply full of figures - her targets and what she has achieved. Also figures relating to her attitude, behaviour and organisational skills. They are as impersonal as you can get. I guess the teachers just don't have time to write personal comments.

I might raise this at the governor's meeting next week.

We can go online and look at reports while they are being written and the date stamp on them is often 10 or 12 o clock at night.

Ha!
Two children with two different types of reports. One merely has target grades (key stage) and achieved grade with no narrative, all printed on half a page.

The other school has a narrative for each subject with a grade based on lots of subgrades - homework grades, punctuality, presentation of work, attendance, contribution in class etc.

Don't know which is better or worse - too little information or too much!

DS(y3)'s reads like a checklist.

"can do X"
"usually does Y"
"is able to Z",
"needs to work on ABC".

Okay I guess, tho' dry. Better than being reduced to esoteric numbers & letters, admittedly.

I think I will write a missive to one of the SMT on the subject...

We get those computer generated ones that no real life person would ever write (or want to read). Says things like

DS plays appropriately showing awareness of cultural context.
DD has an understanding of three dimensional shapes and can manipulate them in an age-appropriate fashion.

Goes on for pages like that and is really annoying.

We get two a year,a short form which has effort and achievement grades for all subjects plus a paragraph each from his class teacher ,and HM.He is year 5.His one for this term also includes exam marks and tear average .It ran to 3 sides of A4.

Older ds also has two a year,plus 6weekly grades.The short form report will have a para from each teacher plus grades and para each from Tutor ,Head of Sixth form and HM.The long report is pretty much the same but far more in depth with up to 3 paragraphs from each teacher.

Yr 5 long report has two paragraphs from each subject teacher,it's done on a computer system but very personal in style,he is clearly recognisable from it.

My children used to get the reports that were computer generated and every year I would send them back with a refusal to acknowledge them as they were so bland and bore no resemblance to my child. It was something that prompted me to become a governor so I could raise the issue and get rid of them.

I told DS2s teacher that there was only so many times he could write that my son was quiet and told him that not one teacher in the school could tell me anything about my child (other than he was quiet and very well behaved). He replied that he was sure he could, to which i replied "not judging by that report!!"

Im so pleased that i rendered him silent!!

Funnily enough though, since then he has been spending more time getting to know my child....(which is great, but a little late in the last couple of weeks at school!!)

On the first page there is a section from the teacher about the child, who they play with, what they have done well at, what they are like at school. I got very emotional reading it, but after speaking to many of the other parents it seems most children got the usual, xx is a delight, xx is well mannered etc. I was happy with it though because some of the things the teacher mentioned about his personality was spot on. The second page is tick boxes relating to what they can do and then the third page is how they are doing/can do in each subject.

DS gets a booklet three times a year, with a fullpage for each subject. All very detailed.

Also a page of grades and predicted grades, one for each item for extra curricular stuff, and a copy of attendance record ..

We have to return the report - so I scan it on to my pc- rather than photocopying all the darned pages and findingsomewhere to store them.

It doesn't seem too cut and pasted - it must take the teachers an age to complete them all.

We had 3 years (YR - Y2) of bla, bla, no levels and I couldn't work out whether DS was average, below or above! I found that very irritating - finally in Y2 we got levels as well which give me some indication of where he is.

I hope it gets better in junior school.

we get very detailed reports for both children (age 5 and 7) at end of school year. The comments from the form teachers are great- they definitely know the kids and write about how they are doing and how they can improve.

But comments from other staff are a waste of time generally. DD consistently gets the bland (and probably widely applicable)comment that her ball skills are improving for PE. She has been able to throw and catch a ball since she was 18 months old!! Similarly bland comments are also ignored.

In the Y2 report we had something like: DS needs to learn his times tables (2,3,5 and 10) in order to speed up his calculations.

Firstly, I had no idea they have been learning times tables at all! Secondly, he knows the 2,5 and 10s tables pretty well as we have been practicing them at home for some months.

I would like to have a better idea of what they are doing in school so that I can support them better, e.g. see exercise books with work and targets during the year a bit more. I got a pile of old maths test home just before the summer and realised DS is quite good at calculating but doesn't think for himself very well - I had no idea!