So you've received your child's school report, now what?
The end of school means it's also time for an end of year report
Whilst I wouldn’t usually send out two emails in a row, yesterday I received my children’s school report so I thought I’d go through our approach to reports.
School reports are usually given at the end of the summer term, although some schools also do a smaller mid-year report to keep you in the loop. The summer report is the final, end of year update on your child’s academic and social progress in school. In my opinion, absolutely nothing on your child’s report should come as a shock to you.
As a former teacher, I have to say that report writing wasn’t my favourite thing to do. Writing 30+ reports and ensuring that they were personalised is a huge task on top of every other teaching responsibility. I much preferred meetings and parents evenings so that I could go over progress with the parents directly - this also meant I could answer any questions or queries immediately. But I digress.
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of School Reports
Good:
Good schools will hand out reports at least one week to 10 days before the end of term. That way you can raise any issues with your child’s teacher in plenty of time.
When you read your child’s report, you should feel like the teacher really knows your child.
The report shows a good balance between what your child excels at and what they need to work on.
Areas for improvement are clear and understandable (i.e. not in teacher speak!)
The report shows a clear indication of how your child has been helped throughout the year - e.g. any intervention groups they have been part of.
In addition to this, a good school will usually invite you to an open morning or afternoon a few times per year so that you can view your child’s school work and invite you to one to two parenting evenings.
Bad:
You are genuinely shocked by some aspects of the report contents with regards to behaviour issues or academic progress.*
The report is generic and you don’t get the impression the teachers know your child at all. Or even worse, you find another child’s name in the report!
The report only talks about the positives and gives you no idea on areas for improvement.
The report is overly negative and doesn’t highlight any areas of strength at all.
The report is written in teacher speak and you feel like you need to have an education degree to understand it!
*I will caveat this by saying, this doesn’t count if you have missed all parents evenings and requests for meetings from the school!
How I approach reports
When I first receive the reports home, I prefer to read them in a calm and quiet area of the house. I sort out snacks etc first and when the children are playing, I take my time to read them.
To start, I’ll take a top line approach of overall behaviour and grades, then I’ll go back and read them properly. After that, I read through the report with the children with a real emphasis on the positive aspects.
Then, over the coming weeks, I’ll see if there are any areas of improvement that could easily be worked on at home. For example, my daughter’s report mentioned that she needs to work on analogue time. This is something we can easily remedy by reminding her to put on her ‘tell the time’ watch each morning.
I’ll be addressing the so called ‘summer slide’ in next week’s email.
What to do with the information
Do:
Sit down with your child and go through the information and what it means (older children might wish to read the report themselves).
Praise effort and progress. Sometimes your child might not meet the end of year expected level for their age group, despite working hard and making progress. It is still important that you praise their individual effort and avoid comparison to their peers.
Seek out clarification from the teacher if you are unsure of anything on the report.
Ask for advice on how to help your child at home, particularly if you notice any patterns to the report. For example, issues with focus and concentration levels.
Request information on how the teachers plan to help your child in the next class (in instances where they do need extra support) and ask if the new teacher is aware of any needs.
Make a plan, if needed, to seek out resources online or 1:1 tuition to support your child during the next academic year.
Don’t:
If you have more than one child, avoid comparisons and overly favouring one child’s results.
Focus solely on the negative aspects of the report.
Feel bad about requesting a meeting for clarification on elements of your child’s report.
Set up a strict school-like schedule over summer for your child to follow in order to ‘catch up’.
Avoid seeking out help for your child so that they can better grasp concepts they are falling behind on.
And finally…
School reports are a great indicator of how your child is doing academically and socially (within a school setting). But there’s a whole host of things a school report doesn’t highlight from their sporting or music prowess to what a fantastic sibling they are. A school report doesn’t typically show how talented your child is at performing arts or how they show enthusiasm when helping out in the kitchen.
Take a ‘whole child’ approach and add the information from school to your wider picture of your child.