does anyone understand school reports

[pippi123]

DD (yr 1) has brought her report home today. I do not think it tells me anything about how she is doing apart from one small paragraph entitled general comments. This is a shame as it is 2 and a half pages long!! It seems like a lot of standard sentences describing things she can do but nothing to suggest whether or not this is what she is expected to be able to do. Are all primary schools the same or does nayone have a report that means something to them?

DD's report arrived today. It was a nice mix of what she has been doing this term and her own personality eg

E loves to be outside running around and using the equipment, she likes to sit playing in the sand. She has been trying out our new sit and ride toys which require complex manual co-ordination. She lijkes to play hockey and is developing good control of the hockey stick"!!!(hockey at 3 years old!!!!!)

E can form most of the letters in her name.....she enjoys chosing abook to take home....E loves singing and chosing songs to sing".

I had a sneak preview at DD's report today.
She is just about to finish Year 1.
I had a look at her literacy and numeracy results (they did tests recently) and she has achieved level 1a. I think this is good but she is my eldest child so I'm not sure.

Didn't get to read the whole report though as I was meant to be working

I head last week that the change from Reception to Year 1 is really big, they go from almost fluid-group free-play to very structured sit-down-&-do-work-in-groups environment.

DS1's Y-R report read very nicely, hard to find anything in there we should try to change or work on, but I am not sure he will want to sit down & do work every day next year, either.

I have experience of this from both sides - as a teacher writing reports from computerised statements (rarely allowed you to say what you wanted) and as a parent. I find that the general comments often gives you the real picture. Though the school my children went to last year also contained grades and an explanation of the grades so at least you could use that to understand the level they were achieving at. I haven't had their reports from their new school. They better be good (I mean, informative) as the school does not offer parents evenings for me to go and get a better picture if they only use standardised phrases.

Just had a similar conversation with DH. Dd1's reception report came today. It is formulaic apart from the odd personal detail, one of which appears twice in the report. I can see why, but I would have liked some information about whether she has reached the expected attainment levels for her age in certain key areas and an explanation of how playing with construction sets constitutes knowledge and understanding of the world...

I believe construction sets are good for mathematical understanding, helsy (geometry).

DS1 was very not-keen about writing at beginning of the year, and am kind of surprised we didn't get more comment on that... but maybe he's just typical for boys so no point.

Thanks Qzebra. According to dd1 she doesn't play with them because she can't reach them .