Reports - what do you want to know?

[TeeManyMartoonis]

Morning all
I am a teacher and my school are rethinking how we report to parents. At the moment three grades are given per subject every half term - one for attainment, and one for effort for homework and class work.

So, as parents, what would you want to know (barring comments - written reports are done at the end of every year as usual)

Any suggestions very gratefully received!

Are you giving parents enough info so they can interpret those scores?

For example would they know from the attainment score if their child is on track to get an A or a C or an E at GCSEs?

How do you distinguish between effort and behaviour? I normally disregard effort scores because how does the teacher know? If they're sitting quietly how do they know if they're trying hard or not? Effort is in the head and invisible.

So I guess I'd prefer a behaviour score to an effort score.

I want t o know what their attitude is like. Are they pleasant and respectful? Are they focused. I would want the truth rather than ... James tries hard when focused .... v ... James talks to his friends rather than concentrates on his work.

Interesting Wild. Effort is usually based on their test scores at the start of the school compared to their class work or what we k ow the child can do

It is an independent school where behaviour is not an issue, so I would have to be careful about phrasing that

Really interesting about scores being tied to predictions though - thank you

Sally - thanks. Problem is these really need to be grades rather than a written report

Ok. Grades were explained to us, because we asked.

Say DD predicted grade is A* and shes on target, she can not exceed that target, so shes always good ... if she exceeded the target (and she cant) it would be an excellent. This makes her report look crap. Do you do this???

What the attainment is measured against. Eg telling the parents of an able child they are attaining above expectations doesn't tell them anything, likewise a struggling child being given a mark for low attainment, against high expectations gives a false impression.

So by effort you actually mean 'meeting expectations'?

So if a child starts as a B student and continues to be a B student you'd give them full marks for effort?

That's interesting. I never knew it meant that.

And if that is what it means I think it could be rephrased to 'on target' or something.

No sorry Wild that's not what I meant. What I mean is if we know a child's best work looks like X, if I get less than X I know that there hasn't been full effort put in to it. I hope that makes sense

Sally - no we don't do that. Our attainment is not linked to prediction to so if your daughter is getting top marks she would get the top attainment (the government doesn't work it out like that though which is VERY annoying)

I would like to see total honesty, however, I know from teacher's friends that many parents don't, get offended, and one friend teacher was actually told by Head that they needed to review what they were writing so not to upset parents.

I don't see how these reports help in any way if issues are not picked up. I do find that going on about what they've been studying in detail a waste of time, that's not what I want to see on a report. I want to know what they have been assessed at doing, how they are achieving, and if they are not achieving as expected, why that might be and what would help to get them there.

If they are doing well, I want to know what it is they are doing that is helping them do so so I can encourage them to continue to do the same.

I have a son in Y11. I want to know what actual grades he is getting at the moment (A, B etc). Instead, all I am told for each subject is that he is 'below target', which is not at all helpful as his targets are A*, so 'below target' could mean anything from an A to a G. I barely bother even looking at the reports, as they tell me nothing.

So Second you would like the grades to be a mirror of the actual GCSE grades and a current attainment not a prediction. So, if I did a mock with some students and one was predicted an A* in the actual GCSE but scored a D in the mock you would want the D? (Sorry, I sound aggressive or incredulous and I am neither - I just want to be clear!)

My DD has done GCSEs.

In y10 and 11 I would have liked to know

Effort
Current attainment (e.g. D)
Predicted (e.g. B)

(Maybe if some of DD's teachers had had to report this they would realised
that she was struggling rather than keep on predicting totally unrealistic grades.)

But above this, I do feel that even if the teachers had been asked to write one line on points to improve, the school would have picked up much sooner that there was a common thread of difficulty running across subjects.

The one thing that I find really useful is to compare test marks for my DS with the class as a whole although I know most schools don't do this. It's really good to know when my DS is operating an average level in his class, or above/below. Otherwise a grade is a very blunt instrument which doesn't really say much.

This is really helpful everyone, thank you - keep them coming!

Have you read the latest on assessment without levels? Leaked over the summer but came out last week.

I wanted to know what DS needed to do to get better grades. At no point in his geography report did it say Ironboy is an idle fucker who gazes out if the window. When finally I managed to see his ( useless but amusing) geography teacher, she did a magnificent imitation of him being an idle fucker gazing out if the window which had me in stitches. In two mins chat we had sorted things, but a flavour in the written report would have been good.

Thomas Telford school has a good system of school reporting, afair. Might be googleable.

Great thank you Negative. I wonder if there would be a system we could use of showing ways they need to improve but without doing a written report...

Depending on the subject some type of topic/ criteria grading. So eg rather than 'good' at a language, a separate grade for vocab, grammar, accent etc. Same for different aspects of any other topic.
I know full well dds writing isn't her strongest point, she reads a lot, can do the spag element well and has a good imagination and presentation. However if she doesn't find it worth the effort (eg topic doesn't interest her and not an important test) she is perfectly capable of producing a tiny amount of scrawl, that she's made no effort with, although the spelling and punctuation is usually fine from extensive reading. Keeping track of the fact she is slowly improving that side, is more important to me than knowing she got an overall good from some excellent work and some awful work. Or worse still an overall excellent because so far the writing has been things she considers worth the effort.

So, if I did a mock with some students and one was predicted an A in the actual GCSE but scored a D in the mock you would want the D?*

Absolutely.

We get a 'pupil progress check' twice a year (then full report in the summer) with

• an effort grade (a - ?),
• current curriculum level
• progress relative to end of KS target ( > above target, < below target, = on track to reach target)

I find it useful - the progress measure is helpful, as you can see if the teacher thinks there's an issue and follow it up if appropriate.

On the whole I find secondary reports and parents evenings vastly more informative than primary!

Also, since books come home, and marking is also pretty informative, it's easy to make a point of looking through books once or twice a term and discussing with dc if needed.

I would like to know whether my DCs were working to their potential and putting the effort in, whether they behaved well in class and were generally well mannered and polite and last but not least I would like to know the areas where they could improve in very specific terms so that I could support them in making the improvement happen.

My DD's school used to do something they called academic mentoring.
There were 2 grids in the planner, both of which had a row per subject.
In one grid there were all the things that could be done well - polite, engaged in class, asks for extension work etc. In the other the things for improvement - adding detail to work, presentation, etc.
Over a week all the teachers ticked 2 or 3 things on each grid.

This was fantastic for seeing areas to improve and common issues.

they dropped it as too time consuming sadly.

I want to know my DD's current level and whether this is average or slightly above/below. I know you shouldn't compare them to others, but great to know if they're where they should be and, if not, for me to then ask or gently support them a bit more with that subject.

A brief comment from each teacher would be great, something likes works hard, needs to concentrate more, needs to speak up, remember books or whatever it is, so again can gently support them at home. Maybe form tutor could provide an overall comments, ie are they respectful, good attitude, well liked, helpful, pleasant or not.

Absence and detentions are shown on the school website, but I wouldn't mind seeing them on a report.

I would like to know where my child sits within the year in terms of attainment (maybe done in quartile a rather than class position) and also how this sits nationally. Probably not possible, but it's what I want (when I did professional exams, our practice paper results were listed on the board with our marks and position: the bottom quartile, whatever their mark, failed. This was how the actual exams were graded: only a 75% pass rate, so we were always striving to improve our positions. Harsh but effective (and led to a very good pass rate in the end).

I would like to know where my child sits within the year in terms of attainment

Yes, we already get DS termly test scores along with the class average which we find really useful, but would be even better to see the full year average for the same tests too, and would be perfect world to see quartiles.