Should I expect school reports to have been proof read?

[LynetteScavo]

Or expect teachers, if they are copy and pasting sentences to change the gender to make it appropriate to the child, and to ensure they are using the correct name?

I know teachers have a lot of reports to write in secondary school, but it seems a bit sloppy to me.

I think you should try proof reading all the school reports first and then let us know whether it is a good use of your time. I would expect there to be around 300 for a junior school and 1300 for a secondary - which will you plump for?

Part of the reason I ask is because I have just proof read a whole load of primary school reports. .

I wouldn't expect one person to proof read a whole secondary schools. They would have to start in September.

I'm proof reading all our summer reports. All 1000 of them. Thankfully limited wording and more numbers but I merge and print and proof read the lot.

All of ours are proof read so it is perfectly possible. It's not one person that proof reads them all, we do it as form tutors for all the subject reports for each child in our form, so I have proof read (and made corrections on) 30 reports this week.

I agree with you that it is sloppy to send them out with the gender or name incorrect, I certainly hope I have never sent one out that badly wrong (I have made typos). I was annoyed last week when dd1 got her report with the wrong name used 3 times.

I'm proof reading all our summer reports. All 1000 of them. Thankfully limited wording and more numbers but I merge and print and proof read the lot.

Yes I would expect the correct name and gender on a school report..... Once they were written by hand, same amount of students so IMO the least that can be done is to change the name and gender.....

And my stupid phone posted twice. Good proof reading there!!

And I do pass mine onto a senior to double check as well. So yes they should be proof read.

Ok if they're not being checked then surely they may as well not bother. There has to be a better way if this is too difficult.

I once handed DD's report back to the school. There were so many mistakes on it, it was awful. Missed endings to sentences, wrong name, wrong gender, words mispelt, sentences that didn't make sense... They rewrote it and I got an apology from the teacher and the Head!

In most schools I have taught in they are proofread at least 3 times, sometimes more. Mistakes still slip through though because we have huge numbers to do and we are not professional proofreaders!

THey should be proof read, but as mnistooaddictive says, mistakes could still slip through.
I don't get this, though StealthPolarBear: Ok if they're not being checked then surely they may as well not bother . Even if there are mistakes, they are still saying things you need to know about your DC, surely?

If the reports don't have the correct gender, name etc then it's sloppy and I'd have to question how much care they were taking with the contents of the report. Besides these are the people teaching our kids the importance of correct English - they need to set a good example not make excuses for sloppy work.

Yes they should be proof-read. DH proof-reads all the subject reports for his sixth-form tutor group, and I then proof-read his proof-reading.

I have complained about spelling/grammar errors in my DCs school reports. There is simply no excuse for it. And as for getting the name or gender of the pupil wrong - unforgivable. Yes, a certain amount of copy and pasting does go on, especially at secondary schools where each teacher could easily be writing severa hundred reports at a time, but name and gender are pretty fundamental!

Of course they should be proof read.

I would be horrified to receive a report witht he wrong name on it - my first thought would be that the wrong slip had made its way into dd's report...

as another poster said - they used to all be hand written, with actual, personal remarks. not C&P form a drop down list of pre-selected phrases. If they could be accurate then, why not now?

I have proof-read my tutor group's reports (secondary school), then the head of year proof-reads them again in case I've missed anything.

I proof read my department's reports and also proof read all 6th form reports as I am HOY.

When they were hand-written, they were a hell of a lot shorter- you could get away with 3 sentences. Most of my subject reports this year are 300-400 words long, and that's without the cut & paste comment about the work which has been covered during the year.

We do ours on computer - I don't C&P (much - on occasion it will strike me that what I wrote for one student would be appropriate for another, but I don't do that as a rule) or use comment banks but the issue is that the software we use has no inline spellcheck and the font is tiny. So I know I make way more mistakes than I ever would in normal writing; typoes are really difficult to catch and the screen jumps about all over the place so it's easy to end up typing in the wrong box altogether! Hate them, and much preferred doing them by hand.

I beg to differ, EvilTwins - the reports languishing at the back of a drawer are all proper, in-depth reports on my progress and effort (or lack thereof in some subjects!).

There are several shorter reports too - single sheets with a few comments per subject and effort grades - but these were given out half-termly, with full reports at the end of each term.

dd2's report (have seen it at parents evening, will receive it next week) is full-on - no complaints there. will be interesting to see what reports are like next year once she is out of Early Years.

Dds school gets the kids to proofread them in form time and then hand them back in for corrections. Not quite sure how I feel about that!

silverfrog - when I started teaching, we wrote end-of-year reports in something the size of a chequebook. Guess I had it easy! My own school reports are similar dimensions.

Ohyoubadbadkitten, that reminds me we used to have to write our parents name and address on the report envelope. In the days before computers and printers. It must have saved someone typing addresses on 400 envelopes.

Brian - we have similar software. It's almost impossible to type them in directly, so I do mine in Word then C+P into the software. Which does mean sometimes the right report goes in the wrong place, if you see what I mean.

Ohyoubadkitten - my students get a look too - they sometimes spot something I might have missed "it says here I got 78% on my maths exam and I actually got 79%" - that sort of thing.

When I started teaching (not that long ago) we hand-wrote them all, the KS3 ones were all on one big sheet, so if you made a mistake all your colleagues had to re-write theirs too. That caused a fair bit of stress in the staff-room!

Ha ha, this reminds me, DS2s last report (yr 8) referred to him by totally the wrong name in Maths, and although each subject was positive - lots of good/excellent progress/effort etc, was summarized by the head as really atrocious.. I showed lots of people and we all had a good laugh Totally summed up the schools' complete lack of communication!

Lynette, are your reports sent through the post then? ours are usually to be found knocking about weeks later at the bottom of school bags

Ohyoubadkitten - surely that can't work. I can't imagine many of the kids in my form being able to spot any more than the most basic errors, but then again having the wrong gender or name is pretty basic. I would certainly not trust them to spot any spelling mistakes or grammatical errors. I don't trust myself that much either really as i teach Maths and the only time I ever use formal written English is with reports but that means I spend a LOT of time making sure I don't make sloppy errors.

Should I forgive the teacher who used DSs surname throughout, in the style of a 1970's grammar school? (Surname could be a first name) - but it's definitely not that kind of school - teachers are known by their first names.