Three little words but, boy, do they carry a lot of weight!
Those of you, who have graced this planet for more than a few years, may have been the unwilling recipient of those three words in your annual school report. I certainly received that comment on more than one occasion! Often a grade was also assigned to the comment – C+. That comment and grade summed up an entire year of education – rather brutally. Even if you were given a “Good” with a B+, it told the reader very little about progress, attainment, enthusiasm, curiosity or knowledge and skills gained that year.
But does a 1000-word missive do a better job?
Over the years we have all experienced various styles of report-writing: standard comments; report-writing software, even handwritten comments. The format changes to reflect MAT or SLT whims or the prevailing fashion, but essentially the report communicates formally to parents and carers a summary of a child’s education for one year. Is that what parents want or need?
As a parent, I used to skim the report until my eyes lighted on the box labelled ‘General’, an unedifying title – but it contained the things I wanted to know about my children’s education. Were they happy? Did they learn easily or did they struggle? How do they relate to their peers? Yes, of course, I was interested in Maths and English but they were not the most important part of the report.
As a teacher, I grappled with squeezing as much information into a report as possible using all the tricks in the book – font size 8 is ok, isn’t it? But writing 30 children’s reports for all subjects is quite an undertaking, particularly if you’re doing it at the end of a long day at the chalk face or at the weekend or half-term when you really should be spending time with your loved ones who you have neglected far too often. I grappled with constructing diplomatically positive phrases to cover a multitude of sins; not new knowledge for the parents but information that needed a softer more palatable version to commit to print. Hmmmm – could do better!
So why write reports? Because there is a statutory duty to do so and certain information is required, but how it is done is not specified. So why not lessen teacher workload and reduce the content to the minimum? Teachers will be eternally grateful; consumption of paper and ink reduced and parents will still be informed.
It may be too late to change for this year, but as the report-writing cycle proceeds, let’s reflect on it and think about the amendments that could be made for next year now, rather than in a year’s time. Consult with staff, parents and children whilst it’s fresh in their minds and you are more likely to come up with innovative ideas.
Report writing – we could all do better!
