What do you think of your chilld's school's report?

[clam]

Not the content (could do better. anyone?) but the style, format and actual information it gives. Is it too wordy, not wordy enough, too generalised? Do you recognise your child from it, or could it be written about anyone? I ask as a teacher who is currently bogged down in the task of writing the things and, frankly, am questioning the validity of the whole exercise. Feedback gratefully received...

I dislike them. Much too wordy, and give the impression that much of the content is cut & pasted and is a generic statement of 'what your child has been taught' which the poor teacher feels compelled to churn out as evidence that she has done her job.

All that is really needed is a brief statement of how the child is performing in relation to the class as a whole or to some other notional standard. Plus a heads up about any problems.

My last post refers to my primary school son's report. Secondary school son has much briefer, more statistically oriented report, which is far more helpful.

Sorry to add to your questioning and depression, but since the National Curriculum has dominated education, I find reports hugely uninteresting. They tell me what my child has attained in all sorts of areas of the curriculum, and I sympathise hugely with the time taken to write them, but I really don't need to know that. The odd personalised comment at the end "A is a friendly child who listens well to others" or "B tends to work better in the mornings than afternoons" or whatever, are worth more to me than all the little boxes being ticked.

In the olden days, reports were more open, personalised, sometimes witty, sometimes bland, but I think that were useful as the basis of a dialogue, and told you how your child was reacting with different teachers. "So why does Mr X think that you are wasting your time then?" "What do you think Mrs Y means by this?" or even "Lets see how you can impress Mr Z next term."

One frustration for me is that our school send them out the day before the end of term, so there is no chance to discuss them with the teacher, in fact it is actually discouraged

In terms of content, I agree with Threadworm that too much is incliuded about what the child has been taught. I would like to know how they are doing in terms of national averages and in terms of the class, whether they are achieving what the teacher thinks they are capable of, and if not, why this might be and what could be done about it.

I also want to know how they come across at school - manners, behaviour etc and how they manage their relationships with children and staff. I would also like to hear if they have done particularly well or badly at a specific thing.

In an ideal world I would like a list of all the lovely qualities the child has, plus examples of when my child has displayed these qualities .

In summary though, I want more about my child and less about the national curiculum, which takes up about 4/5ths of the report atm.

I realise report writing is a real mammoth task - I don't envy you at all! No matter what you do, some parents will be dissatisfied. It does feel that reports now are much less personalised than when we were at school, yet in an age when we have greater expectations - bound to be problematic!

Ours give the impression of being a cut and paste description of what the curriculum says for the year (not necessarily whether they've actually covered it though!), plus a few phrases selected from a ticklist and autogenerated and a section generated from attendance records telling me that h's actually been there (which of course I know anyway). There's no real scope for any personalisation/any info actually relevant to the child.

Agree with the others that the long cut-and-pasted summary of what my child has been taught is not particularly useful. I would like a much shorter much more personal report -
a short summary of how my child has behaved, how well she has achieved for her ability (not for some mythological average child), any concerns or things that need working on, and maybe a hint that the teacher actually knows who she is writing about (I know she does but sometimes the report-speak is so impersonal and bland it doesn't tell me anything).

I don't mind the curriculum summary, but I do like there being a line's space left between that paragraph & the paragraph that's actually about my child: so I know what to focus on.

Re the personal statement, the question I want the answer to is "Is my child doing him/herself justice [in whatever subject the report is for]?" - doesn't really matter about the rest of the class, as that's only a sort of statistical sample of comparison.

So, my favourite ever report bit has been dd's current teacher's description of dd's "contagious positivity" - an unusual form of words, but you could see the teacher's enthusiasm in her very attempt to get at the essence of dd.

There is one sheet that is specifically about your DC and which I find useful, but the rest is just cut and paste nonsense, it seems to me. DS2's last report started off about how Fred participated fully in class discussions, and then in the same para made reference to Ted enjoying teh class project on blah blah. I didn't even bother complaining because the fact they had cut and past so badly they hadn't even checked the child's name was correct throughout, made the whole report seem meaningless.

Ours are quite good. My DCs are 6 and 4. we get a small book with a page per subject (they have different teachers from their class teachers for Music, French, IT, PE, erm - think that's it). There is also a page handwritten by the Head as a summary.

On each page there is a generic bit about what they have acheived which is clearly a cut and paste, but nonetheless useful (I have no idea what DS does in Maths, for example). The second half of each page is about how Ds himself does in relation to things.

One thing that has always impressed me is that it is very recognisably my child that comes out from the page - cheerful, good natured, inquisitive DS.

Having said that we did have one report from his music teacher which raved about both his musical ability and his "role model" tendencies (Ds cannot carry a tune in a bucket). As DH said, there are some parents somewhere of a musical genius who are somewhat surprised by the report of their DS pleasantly bimbling around in the back row with a triangle!

But a thumbs up from me - we really appreciate the input.

Very vague and impersonal.

Could be reading any child's report, certainly wouldn't recognise my daughter in it.

The only part of a my dds reports I have ever found enlightening are the personal comment at the end which can not be generated by way of "Report writer". My husband doesn't even read my dds school reports as he says they don't really tell him anything.

I think school reports (primary) are generic and impersonal. I would be in favour of a grading system for most school subjects (to show attainment and effort) to cut down on what is grossly unnecessary paperwork and a longer personal comment about general progress/ strengths/ weaknesses/ behaviour etc.

Or have a parents evening in the summer term instead of a report. Most teachers wouldn't mind having this as it's got to take up less time than writing 30 meaningless reports and you can say so much more face to face than on paper anyway.