School report been copied

mountainofdebt

To be honest nearly all of my son's secondary school reports have had the feel that they've been copied and pasted and even to the children this can be disheartening -as they do compare what has been said about them.

The funniest thing I ever read in my son's report was how much J had improved during the year ......pity my son's name begins with a B. I was sorely tempted to put in the parents comments box good to hear that J had improved but what about B!

I appreciate it must be hard to think of original things to write but surely it can't be that difficult?

smeged

Frankly I think the teachers are looking for an easy life, when they finish at 3.30 p.m why aren't they preparing for the next days lessons? No, they are shooting off home, (seen) 9 o'clock start and 3.30 finish sounds like an easy life to me. Telling the children to "have a go" before asking for help (looking for an easy life again) if the child don't not understand then ask for help, yes? What is the teacher doing when the children are all having a go, easy life?

milliebear00001

smeged wrote: »

Frankly I think the teachers are looking for an easy life, when they finish at 3.30 p.m why aren't they preparing for the next days lessons? No, they are shooting off home, (seen) 9 o'clock start and 3.30 finish sounds like an easy life to me. Telling the children to "have a go" before asking for help (looking for an easy life again) if the child don't not understand then ask for help, yes? What is the teacher doing when the children are all having a go, easy life?

Hmm - as you clearly have no understanding AT ALL of teaching, or the hours that are put in behind the scenes (usually at home), I will bow out with my stock response to this sort of nonsense:

"If my job's such an easy ride - how come you're not doing it? You must be incredibly stupid not to have chosen such an easy way to make a living huh?"

dizziblonde

Some schools use report-writing software where you chose comments from banks. I've never used this - I do tend to have a set of comments that I pick from mentally where appropriate - and when you've got a 1cm block for the foundation subjects it's very hard to get anything that doesn't sound "samey" in three sentences - what they've covered in, for example, PE, how well they've worked and how well they've attained.

For the core subjects where you've actually got room to type something constructive in I've always tended to have a couple of opening paragraphs that are standardish with what's been covered and then I write the final part of that report from scratch relevant to the child. With targets for next year - they do tend to get a bit repetitive (especially these days with must/should/could - they're always one of the three) as there isn't that much variety you can have within a standard curriculum.

Then you've got the individual comments box which I've always just written from scratch (thankfully I'm an incredibly fast typist so once I get clear in my head what I want to say - reports have never taken me the weeks and weeks I know colleagues spend over them)... I made one parent cry once with the nice things I wrote about her son apparently (even though I mentioned within the standard ICT "this year we've covered" stuff that her son had appointed himself chief in charge of turning off the programme Miss has carefully left on the computer and putting Pingu on for all his friends!).

And yes, I'll tell children to "have a go".... reason being - seeing where they've gone wrong helps you to understand exactly what process they're running through in their mind. I'll also ask them to explain to me how to do something - again so I can see how they're following something through and address any misconceptions from there. I can sit there and spoonfeed kids the answers but how the heck are they ever going to learn something from that?! Government are always runnign teacher recruitment ads - if the job's that awesome - come do it and run out of the door at 3.30, wander in at 9am with the rest of us.

smeged

Didn't answer my questions millibear00001, what are they doing when all the children are "having a go", they should stay in school until 5.00 to prepare for the next day, if not why not?

bonty44

Yeah, my job gives me an easy life (not)
I leave school on time so that I can pick my own children up and help them with their homework.
My homework starts at 9 p.m. and again at 5 a.m., just to get ahead of myself.
Just as well most of us who teach do so because we ENJOY working with children; I certainly don't do it because I like working with the parents! (Some of whom are very supportive indeed but if everyone thinks we're in this for an easy life, I'd like to see them try a day with bottom set Year 9)

Loz01

smeged wrote: »

Didn't answer my questions millibear00001, what are they doing when all the children are "having a go", they should stay in school until 5.00 to prepare for the next day, if not why not?

Omg I hate this attitude of "teachers have it easy" :rolleyes: Try being a teacher for a week - doing lesson plans, marking endless amounts of books, sorting out worksheets for lessons and doing various other paperwork. Most people would drop after the first day in such a pressured job.

blackcoffee

when my friend (who I adore) moans to me about her extra hours teaching ,I just remind her, its her chosen profession, just as, my husbands is his.

yet we dont gets 6 weeks in France every summer, 2 weeks in florida at Easter, 2 weeks break at christmas and 2 * half terms, as my dh doesnt get that much annual leave.

back to the reports..i think we can all see its common practice in lot of schools. i tihnk in the case of that poor teacher who has to write 500 you do need a little help! but when in a primary school with a class of 18, i thinks its lazyiness!

My friend saves her reports, and she trys her hardest to ensure siblings never get the same report.

I couldnt do it my head would explode !

smeged

Still no-one has said what they are doing when all are "having a go", our teacher used to do her knitting:rotfl:what's sooo different now?

If parents didn't say anything how are the schools going to improve?

It's the parents that you are "dealing" with that are concerned for their children, you should be concerned about the ones you don't "deal" with, if I didn't care about my child I wouldn't care about his report, yes?

Mini_Bear

Im a triplet and this happened a lot. so much so my mum would only read one of our reports as they said exactly the same things all thru primary school. mum didnt really mind as she knew we were doing well. this was back in the days when a teacher had 35 pupils in a class and no teachin assistant (late 80s/early 90s!)
This only changed when we had different teachers at secondary school and took different subjects. i guess most parents never realise that the report wasnt specifically written for them!!