Would you expect to have any personalised comments on a school report?

[Neolara]

Dd is in Year 9. With 2 days of school to go, we have not yet received a school report. In the last year, the school has introduced an online portal where parents can see how well their kids are doing. It includes numerical values that correspond to target, anticipated and current gcse grades. You can also see if your child has been sanctioned and their attendance. I think it gives a pretty good snapshot of where my dc is at any one point. However, there are no comments, just numbers in columns. No narrative about the children or detail of any kind. Nothing about the kids character or social relationships.

Given that we haven't yet received a report, it has just occurred to me that the school may not be sending out reports this year. They may think the online portal is sufficient. I was certainly anticipating something a bit more personalised. Do you think a report without any personalised comments is OK? Or is this just normal these days?

It’s normal at my dds comp. Which is fine as she is thriving, but if I was at all worried about her it would feel really inadequate.
In contrast I’ve had 3 sides of A4 from my Ds s primary, as personalised as you could ever want. So completely different.

All students receive subject comments where I work, but we don't have an online portal. Printed reports for all year groups are out by tomorrow at the latest.

It's a time issue. Schools are now so reliant on and obsessed by generating 'accurate' data and grade predictions that there isn't time to write reports as well. I teach about 100 students per year. Writing 100 personalised comments (say, 2-3 minutes per student, with some breaks, some interruptions) is 4-5 hours of work. That time doesn't exist.

In the private sector, you would typically get the data-only sort of report (much as you describe) every half term, with maybe one or two sentences from form teacher, plus full personalised reports twice a year. They might be online, on paper, or both, and there may also be a report on extra-curricular activities.

Morewashingtodo

I couldn't care less who 'manages it'. I am telling you, in my school, the time isn't there. It has been used for other things.

We don't get comments at our secondary, and it's fine. If I need more detail I look at books/tests or email teacher directly.

I think there is a big difference between primary and secondary. In primary there is one main teacher for your child who sees them across everything. At secondary even core subjects might only get 3hrs teaching any pupil per week.

I would imagine that primary teachers write reports for their class ie 30 ish kids. Not the 100 mentioned by
The 2ndry teacher

It's completely different in secondary @morewashingtodo but the bottom line is, if an RE, music, computer science or an art teacher see their students for one fortnightly lesson they actually teach (in a big comp) about six hundred students. Some teachers will know every single student and some won't. They're human. Even if they do know the students, and say the reports are staggered so Y9 are written in, say March, by that time the teacher may have had about 9 or 10 lessons with that student.

My point is, it's not possible alongside their teaching, planning and marking workload. Six hundred. Twelve hundred sentences for parents to then criticise, "Bloody hell, two sentences is all she can bloody manage?"

PeterPiper, 30 students as opposed to perhaps 100, it primary teachers have to write much more and for many more subjects. We've reduced ours massively in recent years from 3 sides of A4 to one, with more data and fewer 'words,' but they're still very time-consuming.

Morewashing We now only write for the core subjects (reading, writing, maths, science and computing), maximum 4 lines of font 11, plus a larger section for general comments.

Morewashingtodo

It doesn't matter what primary teachers do. What relevance does that have? I am not saying it is an unreasonable desire for a parent to want a report. I am saying that my school has, by this time in the year, far exceeded the demands on my time that they are paying me for, and the time to write said reports would come out of my time with my daughter, into which the school has already made considerable inroads. It isn't happening.

Dds reports came home on the last day.

Primary teachers spend five hours a day, five days a week with their students. Secondary teachers at best spend four hours a week with theirs.

I teach two subjects. I have 5 core classes and 5 others that I see once a week. Say there is an average of 25 kids per class. That's 250 kids a week I teach. If I'm writing even 50 words per child, and filling in drop down boxes, target grade boxes (about which I need to talk to every pupil) and then completing a learning matrix for each pupil which is then recorded by our local authority (oh and I need to evidence those grades on said matrix with at least 9 pieces of work over the year that needs to be marked, moderated and then given back to the pupil with feedback), I could be writing 12,500 words per set of reports. And we do this at least twice a year and have 2 parents nights a year that I also need to prep for. That includes reviewing all grades and assessments and writing up next step. I get 6hrs per year (contractually) for all of this work. Six hours. Oh and I'm a core subject too with mainly senior classes so I have all the associated assessment that goes with that. Eg 60 pupil writing two mandatory pieces of 1000 each and doing 2/3 drafts. Oh and that's just the ones we submit, not the others that we write and don't use. That's approx 300000 that I'm reading and marking and giving feedback on just for two of my classes and only for a writing folio. It does not include any other marking or classes. I get about 6 hrs a week to do ALLof my tasks/ planning/ prep/ marking/ recording/ moderation/ reviewing/ peer reviewing/ target setting. You have no idea the constraints on my time or my own life just keeping up with it all.

Actually I said once a fortnight @morewashingtodo I teach English but I am aware of the smaller subjects I've referred to.

It's not just one subject. Our music teachers are teaching another subject because of budget cuts. Art teachers are teaching RE. Because of budget cuts.

I had a wonderful report for my own primary school child. Lots of info on literacy, maths, science, character and personality and overall progress. But nowhere near a 60 words analysis on his religious and cultural awareness, his ability in art, his knowledge and understanding in computer science.

So whilst I think my son's primary teacher is an amazing lady and I'm NOT complaining, from my experience of a brilliant primary school, I don't think primary teacherd ARE doing it much beyond core subjects anyway.

Our school used to. Hasn't this year. We do have the online portal thing which shows assessments grades etc. Thing is I think we really need more information of how grades are compiled (averages, curves & how many assessments go into them) because some of the grades are a bit of a mystery. My D.C. has asked more than one subject teacher how they could improve their grade which usually is constructive but in one annoying instance were 'fobbed off' and told to ask an SLT type person. This irritated me a little but we have decided to wait until next year to tackle any lack in progress. Different teachers also seem to have different ideas over what it means to achieve target too. With a written report you just get more information. Parents evening was good but fairly early on in the school year. We're doing what we can with revision guides.

Am laughing at whoever said “primary teachers manage it”. Yeah with their 30 pupils as opposed to...er ..around 150 or more in secondary as well as marking, lesson prepping and everything else they have to do.
Much much bigger numbers than in primary so just no time to write lovely personalised comments no matter how much they might want to.

I'm part time and teach 200 kids in secondary. We do quite a long written report for each subject and one from the tutor. Next year though we're moving to comment banks. So they'll be much less personal, but much quicker to write. We also have an online portal for data, behaviour, homework etc.

Our secondary school produces a report which is a single a4 sheet, and for each subject lists their predicted grade, whether they are on track to achieve that grade, whether homework is completed on time and whether effort is adequate. It's all on a rating system of excellent/good/acceptable/inadequate.

In a school of 3000 pupils this seems fair. If I have concerns about the report then it's just a case of making a phone call or two, or asking questions at parents evening.

Primary school reports are nice to read, but realistically much of what's written within those is cut and paste.

We have a one page bank of numbers and grades. A number for working grades, attitudes, behaviour and response to feedback.
We might get a quick sentence from the form tutor but not always.

However we have a great online portal where we can check up on homework, positive lesson 'points' with tiny bits of feedback.

Parents Evenings are always very thorough. Also, if I've ever needed to ask/know anything the response has been very swift and helpful.
I have no qualms.

My DS has just had a report from Primary which was 4 sides of A4. A lot of subjects commented on I know they barely touched on this year because of Sats. They did no Science that I know of yet he gets a full descriptive comment. The teachers paragraph at the end is most key to me.
The Primary headmaster adds a comment that he had trotted out for over 6 years....he gave exactly the same comment to my dd when she was there.

I would never expect these kinds of comments from the Secondary. There's just way too many pupils and frankly the teachers have gone above and beyond already for out of hours drama, evening events and trips abroad, plus numerous other things I'm unaware of.
You can't compare them.