Report cards

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Hi,

I will obviously discuss this with the teachers but wanted to ask teachers, parents if they have had this happen. My DD's report card has changed with regard to progress and the comments (what to work on) don't make sense with what has been discussed previously.

I spoke with a couple of other parents and their children have identical comments (areas to work on). I appreciate that the teachers have a lot of reports to write. Do they sometimes duplicate reports/comments?

It's coming up to her GCSE preference time and it's very difficult to know what the right choices are for her. Tbh communication with the school isn't great.

One of my sons has just finished his first year of secondary teaching (we are in Aus but I can’t believe it would be that much different). He teaches across two departments, HSIE for History and Geography and English which is its own department. He was given a template by both departments, slightly different, with acceptable phrases to use in his reports. He had to use those phrases, no others and he actually had to re-do all his English reports because he didn’t initially realise that they were different and used the HSIE one for them all instead. I am guessing that is what is happening for your DD.

Thank you that's helpful. It's frustrating when they do points to work on and they don't seem relevant. I spoke to her about the report and she seemed very confused. I like to support her and the school so just want to get it right. I guess it's best to e mail the teachers and hope (they don't always respond) I get some feedback.

I'm sure if every parent did that the teachers would be inundated 😬🙈

School reports can be useful, but there seems to have been a move towards stock phrases that often make zero sense.

With DD's last report there were 3 subjects that were actually accurate and helpful regarding weaknesses and strengths and what to work on. The rest were either things that you could have sent the entire class, or were ridiculous to the point that DD went in and actually said to the teacher WTF?

Apparently there are now tickboxes that then produce and AI report based on what is ticked! I suspect it may not last long as I ended up emailing all the teachers and having calls with most so it took up a lot more time than 2 relevant sentences would have done! As you say, if we all did that, they would be inundated.

Friend of mine's DC at another school had one in Y11 that praised them for getting to grips with a very basic aspect of a sport and suggested that they might like to practice outside school... child in question trains 6 days a week in this sport and competes at elite national level!

I spoke with another friend today and she hadn't noticed the section I mentioned. Literally a mirror of my DD's report! Yet her DD has very different strengths. If it is AI it has a lot to answer for 🙈

It's a shame really as parents/guardians could be helping the school support children's education. To do that we need accurate understanding of what they need.

Looks like I'll be sending some e mails 🙈

So one teacher has come back to me and so far it was a misunderstanding. They are sending an amended report.

my son works in school IT and the report card program the teachers here use generates a drop down menu of choice phrases.

Teacher.

We had a set list of phrases and comments we could make.

You are generally not allowed to just write free form anymore.

Having said that it's quite easy for mistakes to be made in the system. Reports are usually checked before they go out but it does happen.

That sounds crazy - how can a predetermined list be actively helpful?

Or is it an interim stage before deciding to ditch them and just go for the letter/number reports as parents all decide that they're not worth having?

It's definitely encouraged me in just ignoring anything sent on official paper/apps and just having regular check-ins by phone or email with all teachers every half-term.

It's definitely encouraged me in just ignoring anything sent on official paper/apps and just having regular check-ins by phone or email with all teachers every half-term.

Please don't do this.

Teachers writing free form reports takes a long time. Say 5 hours per class of 30. And that's a minimum.

If a teacher has 5 classes of 30 that's 25 hours just in them writing the reports. Not to mention SLT checking them.

Most schools now rather than one written report are moving to more frequent reports to parents so that parents and students can see more easily if they are not working as hard as they should be/not achieving as well as they should be which is what most parents want to know.

So now it's mostly a mini assessment every half term and then a report goes home based on the teacher saying whether the student is doing better than their target, doing as well as expected, or doing really badly, plus effort grades.

Teachers can do these on about an hour a class and it means parents get information every half term rather than once a year. You used to get parents who would say I didn't realise little Jackie wasn't doing any work this year why didn't you tell me?

This way it's clear if the student is putting in the effort they should be and whether they are on target in school which is basically what most parents want to know.

Most schools will then do some kind of follow up if effort is really bad or if the student is doing badly and get in touch with parents either in person or by zoom to talk about how to help.