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Original poster

School reports...

54 replies

bummer · 18/07/2006 13:01

just had latest ones. It is early days and I am fed up of everyone saying how clever my children are. Ok they do always get excellent reports but it's very early days and I have no idea how bright they are or are not in comparision to their classmates, comparing with the state figures means very little to me. Anyone else in similar position when it comes to understanding if the teachers just praise everyone when they are at primary school level or do teachers say when it is not so????

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Blandmum · 18/07/2006 16:27

To a degree I think that we (teachers) sometimes fall into the trap of second guessing kids performance. In many cases we have to look for underlying reasons for lack of progress, like dyslexia, dyspraxia (quite right too), to such a degree that we sometimes can miss the bloody obvious, that the child isn't putting in the effort

I had a chat with a very nice lad a few days ago who had been sent to me, flagged up as underperforming, what was the reason etc. The reason is that he never does any work. And he was quite surprised to find this out

Original poster
bummer · 18/07/2006 17:15

All very interesting replies. I only mentioned the bit about ... in comparison to class mates because sometimes the praise seems OTT and if they are really doing that well then they should be in the next year up and I can't believe that... or maybe I should.

You see here I can be honest but with the mums I see I could not voice these concerns/thoughts.

OP posts:
Original poster
bummer · 18/07/2006 17:16

PS Like I said they are only in primary school years 1 and 2 so it is very early days and maybe that is the reason for such glowing reports for them both... I don't know.

OP posts:
snorkle · 18/07/2006 17:21

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Blandmum · 18/07/2006 17:29

Knowing their targets is key, I totaly agree.

peasinapod · 18/07/2006 19:10

My Ds s report last year !!!! All I could say to his teacher was well (so and so ) you didnt pull any punches. ( I think she knows that I am a very approachable parent . ) She said that I would get a shock next year if she didnt tell me now . This years report was fine same problems as last year talking to much on the carpet I am waiting to meet the teacher who can solve this problem believe me we have tried everything ,but having said all that he got a 3 in maths and sicence for his sats so Im not complaining .

peasinapod · 18/07/2006 19:12

Oh as a ps I dont mind where they are in the class as when they start work they wont be sitting next to the same person in an office .

bloss · 19/07/2006 09:26

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figleaf · 19/07/2006 12:09

My DS1 in Y3 has just brought home a great report but it has no levels in it. Just As and Bs. I cant compare it to last year as that was levels. Is this normal?

DS2 has just finished reception. Ive got half a page of A 4 explaining hes nice, he can read and write but again no levels or absolute comparisons (except attendance). Is this normal?

fennel · 19/07/2006 12:26

dd2 has just finished reception with a very intensive breakdown of her achievement in everything. But dd1, in a different school for reception last year, just got a general sort of "blah blah could mean anything" report. and this year she's got no report at the end of yr 1. unless, being scatty, she's lost it somewhere.

mell2 · 19/07/2006 12:39

bloss - thought it was really spot on when you said you put an anectdote which shows the parent you know exactly who the child is. If you have an average child (that doesn't stand out as well above or below average) there has been instances at parents eve and reports when i've thought "do you really know my dd or ds".

I'm always pleased if my dc have a teacher that really seems to know them - whatever they have to say about them

hockeymum · 19/07/2006 14:12

I have just this morning received my first ever school report for my dd. I was so thrilled with it, the nursery teacher did a great job on them and put in a couple of photos of her working on the computer and playing with her friends outside. She said "SHE CONCENTRATES WELL AND JOINS IN BUT IS STILL CHATTY WITH FRIENDS" so I know that means she needs to shut up sometimes and concentrate (quite normal for a nearly 4 year old girl) but my best bit was her own final comment "SHE IS A COMPLETE STAR" I though well, she woouldnt put that in if she wasnt pleased with her. So I'm a very happy mummy today.

Original poster
bummer · 19/07/2006 16:46

mell2 I totally agree!

OP posts:
hana · 19/07/2006 17:12

on dd's preschool transfer record
"*" demonstrates a strong sense of justice

at least I know she can look out for herself when she starts school!!

cat64 · 19/07/2006 17:59

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cat64 · 19/07/2006 18:01

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swedishmum · 19/07/2006 19:42

Dd chaned schools at Christmas (Y5) and ds changed about 3 weeks ago therefore we got a report from each. Ds's is computer generated and gives me no idea of my little boy. dd's is great - her teacher has really got to grips with her personality, and although she's performing at level 5 now he's given lots of pointers to improve her work. It also uses up considerably less trees and included an explanation of SATS levels for the year and an explanation of standardised scores and why the school uses them. I'm a teacher myself, but am totally in awe of dd's class teacher. Thank goodness ds will be in his class next year.

Blandmum · 19/07/2006 19:56

The problems come, I think, when kids get to secondary school. My ds had a smashing report, lots of detail, on an A 4 sheet, with masses of personal style comments.

I teach 160 kids, so writing the same amount of detail would be rather like writing half a novel . We are limited to 250 characters, which works out at about 3 sentences... so very little room for the personal comment if you have anything else important to say. A great shame, but hard to see a way around it.

snorkle · 19/07/2006 20:25

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Blandmum · 19/07/2006 20:30

The reason is that they cannot fit them into the report format! If yu write a single character more, it doesn't get printed. Daft, isn't it?

But I suppose they do have to have a format, since the kids have 9+ subjects, as well as the fort tutors comments.

It is hard to get over what you want, without sounding robotic!

Blandmum · 19/07/2006 20:35

And thinking about it further they need some software to format and print it all since we have 1300 kids in the school. Doing it all in Word wouldn't be practical.

snorkle · 19/07/2006 20:44

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nooka · 19/07/2006 20:50

Actually, there was another thing I wanted to say on the subject of reports, and that is about understandability. ds's first report was a foundation profile, which I found completely meaningless, as it wasn't possible to tell what he should have been expecting to achieve. So we just looked at the comments, which gave us a good idea of what he was up to (and reinforced what we had already been told - ie that he was a PITA but everyone loved him!) then I compared profiles with other mum's, and ds's seemed fairly typical so I stopped thinking about it. dd has just got a straightforward report this year, so I assumed they had dropped the profile thing as unhelpful. She just has a summary for each area and a ranking of developing, developed or highly developed. Ds has done yr2 SATS, and the although his general report was similar to dd's report he got an extra sheet with some numbers on, and a very unhelpful comparator sheet. dh and I are both highly educated and work in technical fields involving analysis, but found it very difficult to interpret the information. We wondered, as the SATS score for the school are generally poor, if they were trying to hide something...

albosmum · 19/07/2006 21:11

what i really dislike about all of dss reports
is the exhaustive list of every topic they have covered this year (which i know as i talk to my ds) - but absolutely no indication of how well he did in the teachers opinion
all you get is a vague comment from the teacher and a even more vague comment from the headteacher
(nothing negative and noting specific except the topic list)
sorry for the rant reports are my pet hate - waste of everyones time in their current format

bloss · 19/07/2006 23:05

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