Reports: what would you rather?

[SE13Mummy]

I've been reading the report threads with interest both as a teacher and as a parent and am wondering which style report you'd prefer...

• a very personal, anecdotal style with comments about how your DC is doing but also about some of the behaviour/attitude related things that need to improve (the sort of comments that say 'when he wants to X can do blah blah blah')

or

-a formulaic style that simply states the objectives that your DC has achieved e.g. X can count up to 10, X is able to design a fair test, X uses multiplication facts to solve word problems but doesn't include anything about attitude to learning or those things that might be preventing your DC from making progress

If you'd like a mix, how honest would you like the report to be? Are you a fan of positive comments only or would you prefer that the report included information about some of the less positive aspects of your DC's school experience?

My personal preference would be for the first option; personal and anecdotal rather than a list of objectives. I find personal reports much easier to write as I like them to reflect the child I'm writing about but wonder if there is anyone who would prefer the report to be purely 'academic'?

I don't mind negative comments but they need to be about something you can do something about or work on and not be a complete character assassination and the list should not be endless.
Type of report I prefer is a mixture of first and second....telling me what they have learned well and what the need to work on. Personal comment on attitude and application etc too please.

Agree with negative comments needing to be target focused. On our junior school reports they are always about the one thing they can do nothing about (problems related to their disability) and I always feel this is not so much about helping dcs to get forward as about making it clear to us how inconvenienced the school is by having them there.

Mix is good, targets is good.

I thought dd's English teacher (Yr 8) was brilliant at the parents evening: very clear mix of good points and areas where she needs to improve.

I would prefer a report that means the same to everybody, whatever the style they choose. At the end of the day it is impossible to make everybody happy.

My first ever experience with reports this year (child in reception) was a shock for me. The report does not 'grade' the child, but paraphrases more or less literally the EYFS scale. After a ?personal? introduction, we get child ?x? has achieved the following goals... Still working on...
There are no translation in numbers or in meaning. Thanks to MN I could understand what it meant in terms of progression, i.e., basically if my child seems to be doing just fine or under/above average.

I am very happy with schools not assigning numbers/labels to kids at this stage. I am not that happy about the fact that they actually do so, but only the educated/well-informed parents can fully understand the report. It would be so easy just to add a sentence at the beginning explaining it for everybody or linking to the source of information.

I'd prefer a personal one. DS's report was mainly ticklists of objectives plus a very few comments and the comments were not desparately helpful "DS has made good progress in reading" - er yes, I can see that from the ticklist of objectives but what areas does he need to work on, which has he done particularly well on?

Some of the objectives seemed ridiculous e.g. "can count to 10" - well yes, he's been doing that since he was 2.5, I'm not overly impressed that he can do it at the end of Y1.

Also (not wanting to brag) DS is doing quite well so he was marked in a lot of areas as "exceeding expectations for a child of this age". Which is obviously nice to hear, but even a child who is exceeding expectations has weak points, areas they should focus in etc.

I still remember one of my early reports, part of which said: "MMM's writing is very good [or words to that effect], but she should now think about using paragraphs."

No idea why I remembered that, but it's an example of a good, simple sentence with constructive criticism.

DD's report was a bit of a mixture of all the above. Some factual, some personal and some detail of where to look to improve.
It included sentences such as "DD1 is a quiet, friendly girl who has grown in confidence through the year", "She has a good grasp of numbers and has achieved all our goals in Problem Solving, Reasoning and Numeracy. She is able to recognise, count, order and use numebrs to 100 and now needs to work on writing them." "Dd is a very well motivated learner with a mature attitude to her work. She has made excellent progress this year and will enjoy the new challenges of Year 1". "Next steps for learning: Continue to practise joining writing being especially careful about letter formation. Practise writing bigger numbers. Take careful note of punctuation to put more expression into reading"
This is intended to show the wording of the report - not a stealth boast - although I am very pleased with it. As a parent it gave me a much clearer picture of her progress than I was expecting.

I want a mix.

Obviously, I do want the personalised report - because I want to read about my daughter.

But, she is act school for a reason - to learn, so I also want to know how well she is actually getting on.

The trouble with the 'X can do Y' type reports is that I have been given a lovely long list of what my DD can do, except that I have absolutely no idea whether 'making number bonds' say is a really good skill for her to have acquired this year, or whether it is something she should have learnt three years ago! I think perhaps something quantitative to help me interpret the qualitative information would be good.

The other danger with just listing what they can do is that it can completely not reflect the child. For example, in school PE my DD did basic gymnastics, so the report came home saying that she 'had mastered basic gymnastic skills' which is true, she had. But this totally ignores the fact that she is in the squad at gymnastics and is learning to do handstands on the beam - hardly 'basic gymnastics'. The formulaic report can be totally accurate but not actually reflect the child at all.

Personally, I don't care what other children in her class are doing - so I'm not interested in seeing where she ranks in her peer group, but I am interested in how she is doing what is expected for her age, and some guide would be good because having read two pages of her school report, I am no wiser at all as to how she has progressed. All I know is that her teacher wrote some nice things about her.

Plain English, no bollocks jargon, honesty and constructive critism.

first one and my ds is a PITA at school!!!

I liked our dds reception report. It had the tick box tabley thing for the EYFS targets but also a lovely A4 page of description that really told us how she was getting on as a school girl.

This year, her year 1 report was descriptive (which I liked) but I would have also liked to see some 'levels' reading ages etc.