Do all children get "good" school reports???

[Blossomhill]

Just wondering as my 2 have always got good ones with no negative stuff in. Just wondered if all reports had to be positive or if it was just my little darlings

DD got "enthusiastic" six times in her report.

I am considering giving the teacher a Thesaurus as an end of term present.

I would say DD's report was "bland" in several areas but she got a great write up for her personality and social skills. A miracle considering I am so useless socially.

Our junior school reports have always admitted grudgingly that our children are polite and get on well with everybody and work hard and (in dd's case) get very good results, but then made the main thrust of the report about how bad it is of them to have lots of absences and how difficult this makes things for the school(genuine health reasons, well documented, but not mentioned in reports, so anyone reading them must deduce they are truanting). Needless to say, this is a junior school with a very poor track record for dealing with disability.

In my first year of teaching I had to write over 500 reports (due to shared classes and timetabling issues). Forgive us if we repeat ourselves!
In my reports, you can usually translate the following:

Enthusiastic - noisy
Easily distracted - naughty
Tries to.... - can't
Needs to participate more - wallflower
Popular - bullying tendencies
Assertive - rude
Has improved - was terrible
Disorganised - buy child a pen
Could - won't

I'm a teacher and if anyone asked me to be positive at the expense of truthfulness in my reports, I would refuse. What is the point? Parents need constructive (not necessarily positive) advice about their DC position and ability as well as ways they might improve or continue to develop. This is not hard to do and many children face similar issues so there is inevitably a bit of 'cut and paste', not always a bad thing although it is often slated on MN!!

I used to work in one school where I wasn't even allowed to put a target for improvement on a report - because it might be seen as negative and it made the whole process completely pointless.

I have a general policy that I won't refer to a behaviour/social issue in a report unless I've already brought it up on a parents evening (usually the parents have already brought it up with a, "he can be a little so-and-so if he wants to, is he toeing the line?"). I've never used that report writing software (I find it hideous) but I do tend to fall back on a somewhat generic sentence of what we've covered in the afternoon subjects - followed by a comment on something they've done particularly well within that subject; then write Literacy and Numeracy more from scratch for each child before doing the other comments thing individually - trying to focus on the positive wherever possible... so far (touch wood) I've never had complaints when I've done it that way - I did reduce one parent to tears with how nice the report their kid had got though!

You do have to fall back into some euphemisms though - but I've never viewed a report as the place to say "Your child's a mini-tornado on legs, never shuts up and I wish he'd quit poking Johnny in the ear with his pencil."

You'd be amazed the complaints that come in from reports though - I worked with a colleague who agonized over her reports, put her heart and soul into them (I've always been able to do mine relatively quickly - possibly because I type so fast), and a mother came in yelling and screaming that she didn't feel her report reflected what a unique little individual her son was - when it was all about the things he chose to do in class (it was reception), what a lovely funny chatty little man he was etc etc (and he WAS a really sweet kid with a spark about him so none of it was a lie - I had him the following year and he was a sweetie).

My general policy is if that if the kid's given me grey hairs all year and been REALLY unpleasantly behaved - I'll miss out the line that I'll miss teaching them the following year - but that's just my personal aversion to lying kicking in there!