School Reports - cut and paste jobs

Imnoexpert_2

I can see the funny side of it but.....

Ok parents and teachers I have my child's report - all 18 A4 pages of it. He's 12.With the exception of one teacher it displays no convincing evidence that they know my child as an individual. Much of it is cut and pasted from what I know to be (but many probably don't) the assessment criteria.

I know teachers are busy so I am very sympathetic and I know that my son's school is 'outstanding' which doesn't necessarily mean it's any good but does mean that it does 'evidence' paperwork and pupil assessment/monitoring thoroughly

My child needs to use 'the conventions of text types flexibly'

Both parents are graduate professionals and we have a relative who is a teacher but we all needed to use the internet to understand this. So the audience for this is clearly not parents. And how do other parents cope?

I'm happy for others to post examples from school reports in this thread for our amusement.

amistupid

On my school reports teachers in most subjects put 'Could try harder'; they were right and I wish I had put in a lot more effort.

KateBob

Well there was the year my daughter was referred to as HE for half of the report and was reported to have done well in an event she didn't take part in!

This years report for my son from the same school appears to be about him and is highly accurate.

Out,_Vile_Jelly

I worked as an EFL teacher abroad, and writing reports was a nightmare. It's relatively easy for the very bright or very difficult, as you've got plenty to say about them. It's the average majority who make it hard. So many students are just "there"; they mostly turn up, mostly on time, do ok in tests, don't say much, don't have any distinguishing features and it's a massive struggle to find anything interesting to comment on. This was years ago in pen & paper days, so I was advised to develop large handwriting in order to fill the page.

nearlyrich

My DD had an IT teacher who cut and pasted "He is doing very well in this subject" it was around 10 years ago but he clearly had no grasp of the subject he was teaching... Lazy reporting should be called on by parents using Ofsted jargon is not acceptable, caring parents need to know what they need to do to support the school in their child's learning.

burlington6

If you're not happy, say something. Just because they're teachers doesn't mean they are above criticism.

fussypensioner

In the 1990's the school I worked in was sent a CD from DOE with an example of childrens progress and how to phase it on a report e.g.

Instead of saying little johnnie is disruptive and has behaviour problems, they had to say "we are working towards new goals to get a positive outcome for little Johnnies behaviour"

Its not the Teachers fault - their hands are tied.

Cuilean

As a teacher who's worked in plenty of different (primary) schools across England and Scotland, and experienced plenty of different types of report writing, it depends on how the reports were written.

In the first school I taught at, you used a computer programme which had a statement bank to choose from, one for each subject. You selected which statements were most relevant to the child. You told the computer the child's gender and it glued them all together. It was quick, but even as a teacher I disliked the de-personalised style. It also only took one mis-click when selecting gender and you've got a report for a girl using "he" throughout, which made you look a right wally.

In my second school, we didn't use a computer programme, but we had a box for each subject we taught and wrote three or four sentences. No statement bank, but strong "guidance" was provided on the kinds of things we should be writing.

In Scottish schools, I was encouraged to write a few sentences for each subject by hand. No computer allowed. My experience of the Scottish system was that it catered far better for each child as an individual anyway, so this made more sense. In Scotland, no child was assessed until it was agreed that they were ready to be assessed, so you could have children working at many different levels in your class. A statement bank would have been entirely useless due to the variety of abilities.

In my last school, we initially had to write reports twice a year. We were given a pro-forma where we had to give a mark for effort and also the national test level achieved, as well as our teacher assessment. We were not allowed to use statement banks, and one paragraph per subject (We had 10 subjects to cover) was considered inadequate, so rather than writing a few useful sentences for the child, we were fleshing it out with rubbish. It took ages, and the official data we spent ages collecting was of no interest to the majority of parents. They didn't like it, and we didn't like it. In the end, the school switched to report writing half way through the year, and an extra parents' evening at the end of the school year where you could meet the parents and have a chat about their child's progress.

Sounds like you're the victim of a statement bank generator. As much as they're an easy way out, I wouldn't like to get a report about my child where the school has gone for a "best fit" scenario. I've read my own childhood school reports recently, and the hand-written ones are the best ones, because you know the teacher was thinking about you, and not a selection of sentences. A few brief, personalised sentences mean much more.

peachyprice

Pah, at least it's only a written report.

One year at parents evening, actually sitting there with my daughter, her French teacher told me how she was too chatty, how her grades were not as they should be, how she doesn't like speaking in class etc., only to realise after 5 mins of this that he had the wrong ******* (insert daughter's name) sitting in front of him. They don't even look the same, the other ******* is mixed race, by daughter isn't.

DevilsAdvocate1

I have 3 children and was disappointed with my son's report for the first time ever. He is 10 and the report was split into 9 subjects. But it did not speak about my son at all. Each subject had a description of what the class has been learning this year.

There was nothing individual about it and I'm none the wiser about his progress. I know what he has covered in each subject, but I knew that anyway due to homework etc.

Think the teacher wrote one report (on a computer) and then printed one copy for each of the 12 children in the class (its a small school).

I would have much preferred a few paragraphs on how he is progressing and what he needs to work on. It wouldn't even matter if it was split by subject, but just something about him.

singlestep

In an ideal world, all reports would be highly personalised and detailed. As a teacher, it's getting harder and harder for me to do this. In my first posts, reports were handwritten and enough space was provided for about 80-100 words at most and this because my handwriting is small. Ten years later, they're typed and over three times as long. Last term, I had three year groups of reports, each due in approximately ten days after the other. I had 80-99 pupils per year group of my own and, due to staffing changes, I was also asked to write more concise and generic comments for pupils I hadn't been teaching. We have phrase banks, which members of my department were asked to agree upon years back but which very quickly fell out of use for us though not for some other departments within the school.

To save time, I have my own templates, revised at the start of every set of reports and with bits that have to be added for individual pupils - performances in a particular set of work, comments on homework etc. About 50 - 70 words on next steps are fairly standard for all with room for changes like 'should continue to' becoming 'should take a more conscientious approach to' and so on. I group as many pupils as possible - very able, able but should push themselves and others and write them together, so copying and pasting does happen. I still have quite a few that don't fit in to a certain category. It's not how I want to be doing things but it can be a very long week (not complaining about it but there are only so many things that can be squeezed in to a week - I couldn't do it if I didn't love my job).

As for errors like wrong gender of pupil - in my department we complete quality assurance and check for gender, typos, spelling and that reports make sense. It's not perfect, but we do have fewer mistakes than others.