End of year school reports

[Over40]

What do you expect to see in your DC's end of year report. Our school recently asked parents this question to try and improve what is currently sent out (although I think it's pretty good!), and the responses that came back were so varied it makes me wonder whether it is possible to have one format that delivers against everyones expectations.
Just interested in others opinion and your experiences.

My preference is to see plenty of comments from DS's teacher. Tick boxes are meaningless really.

I like to see what level they are working at and the level they are working towards. I can see if they are progressing and be sure that the teacher has a clear goal of acheivement for them.
I also like to see a personal comment about my child that shows her teacher knows her well.

We have a generic comment from the head at the bottom too. This is not necessary but is a nice touch.

I agree blametheparents. I much prefer comments to tick boxes.

Depends on the quality of the comments though. In our first end of year report the comments were directly related to knowledge/skills expected for that year group. The teacher struggled to vary the language - what she wanted to say was is working towards, has met or has exceeded this target, but it was a mumbled mess and I struggled to understand where my child actually was, with all the woolly language she had used.

Following year we had tick boxes and a comment on child's attitude, application, behaviour etc for each subject, it was much easier to see how well your child was doing and what their strengths and weaknesses were.
Downside was that the teacher screwed up in a few of the tick boxes - my child had mistakenly acquired some skills and lost others - not just on my child's report but on many others too, or maybe the teacher just didn't know our kids very well.

Oh that's funny, I quite like tick boxes .
What we had last year was a long list of subjects with ranges of boxes for achievement and effort -- it was a very good way to quickly summarise how DC were doing.

I find comments so bland and not necessarily meaningful or specfiic by comparison. You get comments like "Thomas has had an interesting year but he's settled down now" -- well, since when did "interesting" mean "unsettled", and why not say something about what caused him to settle down?

I like the fact that DS added faces (Happy/wobbly or sad) about how he felt about each subject.

Nat Curric levels don't mean a lot to a lot of parents. Both our schools (primary and secondary) don't report levels. They just give:
below target, on target, above target.
Plus effort grade.

Effort grades are the ones that are particularly important.

Personal comments are the best thing. I would rather have 2 sentences of personalised comments than 2 paragraphs of copied/pasted waffle of what they've done this year.

Levels: I'd like to know the expected national level for that age in that subject/section, the average for the class and my dc's level in relation to that, if levels are to have any meaning. That's why you get threads on MN saying is this good or bad, as parents don't know. Hwr, I can understand a school's reluctance to indicate that the whole class' average is below national expectation but that is really what parents want to know.

Comments: What they are good at, where they've improved or really tried, where they need to focus to improve or haven't applied themselves. Attitude and behaviour - be blunt!

Am going to try and practice what I preach!

One year I received a report for ds, which when compared to my friends dd's report was exactly the same word for word except for replacing he with she.

This made a complete mockery of the end of year report system as my friend's child had an amazing artistic ability and my ds put no effort into art all. Whereas ds who was then 6 had a reading age of 12 and friend's dd, was a good reader but not nearly as good as ds.

I, like the teachers who have to produce the end of year reports, find them a complete waste of time, effort and paper!

I like the idea of an indication of effort and attitude. Ours only focus on working at, to, beyond statements. They are then a bit generic (although do reflect each childs attainment) as there are only so many ways to say the same thing!

Something, anything in the report, which makes you think - that teacher actually knows my child.

At DS' old school some of my friends noted that their children's reports contained absolutely identical paragraphs about their children - they'd simply been cut and paste gone mad from one report to the next. Teacher got very uppity when this was pointed out.

Not so much of a problem if they were equally reflective of the different children but when one of the three boys was described as 'a quiet little boy' when everyone knew him to be anything but that, it was infuriating for his mum.

Agree that something telling you where your child is relative to the accepted level is helpful.

I don't care about the level of the rest of the class, but I would like to know if my dc is falling well behind the expected level for their age.

As a teacher, I much prefer being able to write how each child is getting on rather than the 'we have studied' nonsense my sons got on their reports. Whatever we do though, we get complaints - some parents only want levels and to hear their child is above average - even at 4! Others don't like you being too honest about their precious hooligans - but you have to be so their next teacher knows what to expect.
One thing I am sure all teachers would like - not to lose their May halfterm with their own kids writing the blessed things!

I prefer some degree of objectivity - comments can be very misleading in the sense that you have no idea how they are doing. I don't need to be told that DS is polite and well-mannered or that DD is bolshy. I know that.

So what I like to see in DS's reports (his because he is still at primary) is a tickbox for the achievement grade, a tickbox for the effort grade, a record of the SATs (what level he is working on and the national average and the school average). For exam results they give his actual percentage and a year average. That's helpful too.

I absolutely agree with Cat64.

I don't agree quattro. I think a that a comment telling the parent that the child needs to work on full stops and capital letters is much more useful then a 'year average' of exam results.

What good are the series of numbers? They're not actually telling you anything specific that the child has to work on.

I think the sort of thing about the DCs needing to work on capital letters or whatever is usually communicated via their journals which are weekly communications? Or they are at our schools anyway.

When do reports normally get dished out?

I confess I used to absolutely love getting mine when I was at school but I was a bit of a girly swot

Not in mine child's school Quattro, in primary the work is kept in school and is limited to a positive comment, so the report can come as a revelation!

Gah, grammar!

I've no idea what ds gets up to, what his learning goals are or anything so am looking forward to his report although I suspect it will be bland and tick boxy rather than insightful.

At the school where I work we all have to use this computer program that generates the reports for us, so we tick which statements fit each child. Makes for very generic reports I'd imagine (my first year of doing reports this way) but I#ve been told saves lots of times.

When doing 20-30 kids reports by hand, it takes so long and you lose your will to live quickly, that you do end up recycling statements and comments. They really shouldnt be all identical though.

My DDs school drastically cut down their reports last year to just 1 A4 page for the whole lot.

Levels (test and teacher assessment) for core subjects with a brief but personal comment including a target for next year,

There were effort/ achievement grades for all the other subjects and a general personal comment at the end.

No tick boxes or generic phrases.

SOOOOO much better than the "can do, has achieved" tripe (that tells you nothing about any difficulties they may be having) we have had in the past and I'm sure it was much easier and less time consuming for the teachers.

DD is in Yr 2 and gets 2 reports a year. We don't have tick boxes so I can only guess what they cover.

DD gets a report - usually 2 or 3 paras - on each subject, written by the teacher who takes her.

At the end there is a page of overall comments from her form teacher and a couple of lines from the head teacher.

We know what she is learning from the bi-weekly reports we get.

When do they get sent out then?