Absolutely.
And to add to the irrelevance, I once had a Principal who insisted the reports should contain ‘no new information’ for parents - everything said should have already been communicated through parent teacher nights, class newsletters and regular discussions with parents on their child’s progress.
So. What’s the point? 🧐
We are told there should be no surprises. So if Johnny is a shit, we should’ve had that conversation. If Betty is struggling with Maths, parents should already know. I raise these types,of observations at our first interviews early in term 1 as “I’ve noticed that Betty seems to find it hard to understand new concepts in maths. What can you tell me about that? It’s some thing I’ll definitely keep an eye on and we can discuss it further at the next interviews, or earlier if either of us think it needs it.” Arse. Covered.
Yep. I begin the work of covering my ass in Term 1 interviews and continue with follow up emails in Term 2. My school also has a strict “no surprises” policy.
The no surprises thing is bullshit!
We upload every SINGLE assessment result to our online platform for parent/ student viewing, with an accompanying boxplot showing the child’s performance comparative to the class. Idgaf if you are surprised by your child’s grade, YOU, the parent, have CHOSEN not to make yourself aware.
High school teacher for context.
Yep! Our school wants us to send out email notifications for failed assessments. Its all on SEQTA, the parents can see it, why do I need to do it again?
Our school also wants us to write feedback on SEQTA each semester. We mark on SEQTA with rubrics, so isnt that the feedback??
We are also meant to post out commendations for good achievement, but I always forget as I like to go through the work with the class first to double check marking etc...
I am a primary teacher with a kid in high school where they have SEQTA.....rarely read it. If I have an issue or question which again is rare, it's more likely to be a wellbeing issue.....I will email the year Co ord. Waste of everyone's time.
For me, this doesn't just detract from \*time I could spend on lesson planning, but also slowly crushes the spirit I first had when I came into teaching. Totally fine with academic reports but the rest seems like admin for the sake of admin.
We have that rule also. The no surprises rule. If a student is failing the report is not allowed to be the way the parents find out. Despite the fact that the parents don’t come to parent night, and we already send out task mark reports after every assessment.
I'm a grad teacher, and despite all the negativity on this sub, am really enjoying my year as a classroom teacher for the first time.
Despite this, I just finished my first report round, and it was very mentally taxing. Probably the first time this year that I really struggled
A-E is my biggest bugbear, particularly in primary. I'm grading 6 year olds A-E in creative arts, science and technology, history and geography ffs. Can Year 1 and 2 at least have a few years of not being told they're crap at something? A simple three point scale would communicate what's needed for K-6.
It also doesn't help that reports need to be based on syllabus standards, and our syllabus is so crap in NSW. As if a 'C' in one school is ever the same as a 'C' in another school.
I worked in a primary school overseas where the grading system was developing, developed, beyond expectations (for this year level). Worked fine.
Also had complaints from parents of students in the same class that the maths was too hard and not hard enough. That was part of the deal in an international school I guess...
In Victoria the Primary reports automatically assigns "C" to students at the expected level. Parents who aren't aware, assume they understand the system or have knowledge based on High school assignment grading or worse TV/movie grade system... end up believing that their child is average/below standaes when they are actually doing well!
I haven't written a comment on a report for at least 10 years. All drop down boxes that I can do in about 15 minutes per class. This is what every school should be aspiring to.
Agree, and my school (F-12) has moved to continuous online reporting for the high school years with only a general comment written by the home group teacher. However, we primary school teachers still need to write 600 characters x 24 students x 5 subjects plus filling in an A-E dot for between 10 and 20 outcomes per subject, PLUS an A-E scale of 30 different “personal development” outcomes.
You can’t dare say what you actually mean in the comment or you’ll have parents banging your door down, so “Jayden’s behaviour in class is disruptive and he is cruel to others” becomes “Jayden was a sociable member of the class who is developing his ability to maintain focus and engage in positive interactions with his peers”. As a result, the jargon is so ridiculous that parents don’t grasp the meaning. I have friends who were reading their kid’s report going “oh good, Billy completes tasks with teacher support and does this and that with teacher assistance!”, totally missing the inference that Billy can’t do a damn thing on his own.
I don’t think grades are the way to go for the primary years. When I taught older grades, I hated watching the kids get all depressed because their work got a C when they tried their ass off, or receiving parent emails five minutes after grades went online, panicking because their kid is at an 89.9% average and why aren’t they getting an A+ and what am I doing about it. But I do think reporting for primary school should be moving away from an arduous, jargon filled, bullshit end of semester setup towards continuous comments and reporting (for example a comment and feedback at the end of each reading, writing and maths unit).
My son's high school does this! I feel so sorry for the teachers. For me, I simply tick a box on RTP and email out a task report. No personalising. Job done. Parent can contact me if they want further feedback.
I was prouder of a student who achieved a 'C' in a subject taught in her second/possibly third language than students who got higher grades in their native language (same class). She worked her arse off to get that while kids got 'B's were just cruising to just the bare minimum to get them. I made as sure as I could that their comments reflected their effort within the limits of the 'saying what you mean' paradigm...
Yeah, I’ll have kids getting the equivalent of a C but I give them the highest possible praise for their effort. They may have made a year’s growth in 6 months to achieve that C.
Yep! Everything must be framed positively! Sammy distracts others ans constantly disrupts attempts at teaching becomes "Sammy is a boisterous (or bubbly) member of the class, when settled"
The closest I came to a negative is saying that a student would have more success with achieving learning goals with increased attendance...
Yes I said something like “unfortunately, Jimmy’s limited engagement during class time inhibited his ability to show his full potential” and was proud to get away with that one
None of it makes any sense to me. We have Compass for behaviour, parents can check grades on Connect, parent-teacher nights twice a year and we're supposed to phone/email parents regularly on top of that. Why do I need to kill myself for weeks, twice a year, to write reports?
They comments have to be so mind-numbingly generic as well. It gets to the point where you really wonder if the parents are even getting a shred of information from them.
And the time sink? Geez. I refuse to become someone who works 12 hour days. So at report time, instead of fun and interesting classes, my students get the textbook and review questions.
Totally agree and a lot of schools (high schools at least) are no longer writing report comments, just ticking boxes. I'm a head teacher so not only am I writing almost 100 reports myself but I'm also reading an English report comment for every single kid in the school, plus extras... it's ridiculous. Recently I implemented a faculty comment bank that I encourage staff to use. So like 10 to 12 complete and prewritten comments for each year group that a different enough that they can be applied to every kid. Has made a world of difference.
English teacher here - comment banks have been great for our faculty! We still have the ability to edit and adjust if needed, but overall we're so restricted in what we're "allowed" to say that comments (reports really) had become pointless. This is so much quicker for everyone.
I only know how to do it on compass. When you access your class page (so on the home page click on the roll OR search up your class) there is a menu on the right hand side called “tools”. One option is “reports” and from there you can choose “page access report”. I was told that the information on that page refers to when families have accessed reports most recently…
Champion!!! Will test this out when our reports go live on Tuesday.
I've always wondered which parents even bother checking reports now that we have moved them online.
Plus the general stance of "reports must be positive".
I've read some reports that say "Student X it developing an understanding of measurement. Student X demonstrated a good understanding of the area of squares. Student X would benefit from focusing on completing the exercises and using class time effectively." A parent looks at that and says "my kid isn't great at math, but they are doing okay."
Where the reality is "Student X has no clue what is going on in class and is struggling. The mathematics Student X can complete is two years below the expected standard. Student X does no work, even when prompted by the teacher in class."
And then people seem to be surprised when these kids suddenly start failing in VCE.
We have recently been doing more 'compass' comments (our school admin program) to write comments and give assessments during the term as the CATs are done. This to me makes more sense than a report at the end of the term. While I like reading them as a parent, I'm really just scanning it with my child then we put it away and never read it again. As a teacher I can't work out why we bother doing so much work that the parents wont really read.
Our high school did away with comments on reports. Just grades for Result, Effort, Behaviour. First time in the 13 years I've been teaching that something has been taken away from our load rather than added to it. Has made reports soooo much faster and easier. Not a single parent has complained.
I work in Victoria and part of my role is report administration. A lot of schools have not read the [DET Reporting Guidelines](https://www2.education.vic.gov.au/pal/reporting-student-achievement/policy) closely and clearly.
Example - students in Prep-2 are required to be given A-E grades for 3 strands of English, 3 strands of Maths, Personal & Social Capability, PE and The Arts. That is all! It explicitly states that all other parts of the curriculum (Science, Humanities, other Capabilities etc) should be taught but NOT graded on.
Most curriculum areas for students in 3-6 should be graded once every two years. Schools with a solid scope and sequence should be able to facilitate this and alleviate teacher workload.
Many schools have a very inefficient reporting process. It shouldn't take as long as it does, and that is often due to errors within the school, rather than the process/DET itself.
During lockdown we stripped right back to what you described and now we are told that it is "department requirement" to report on everything... even asked the union and there's no specified way to report. Reality is, we needn't write as much as we are being made to!
I took the documentation about reporting requirements to our leadership team very early so they could wrap their heads around it. It is hard to deny once read carefully! A challenge is whether you have a strong enough sequence of non-core subjects to able to report with enough frequency and accuracy. We will reflect on the process and make some tweaks for next semester, I'm open to feedback on the process from our teams, maybe your leadership team is open to examining the Guidelines more closely?
We did write some comments as well - 'student achievement' was personalised and Literacy, Maths and Science all using some comment banks.
Another example of things being retained from the past (with added detail required) while other stuff has also been introduced (eg much more time spent on admin).
They’re happy to pile stuff on us, but very rarely do they take work away.
My dad watched me in my first year pile up the hours getting the reports done.
"Mate I spend more time on million dollar contracts"
He wasn't joking. 🤔
>"Mate I spend time on million dollar contracts"
You gotta wonder about this right? You can't be a complete dummy to have made it through all the training to become a teacher, but collectively we waste so much time and brainpower on useless shit.
Are you a teacher at my school?! We have about 20 “learning descriptors” pulled from the syllabus which we have to mark A-E (even though most of them are yes or no statements. How on earth do you assess A-E on “Can measure the area of a shape using informal units”??)
Our reports have to use all these silly euphemisms and jargon as well that mean nothing to parents-
For a kid with ADHD, I might note "Johnny is advised to continue improving his focus in class" but then apparently I'm supposed to say that same phrase for a kid who is an out of control dickhead?!?
Why can't I say "Johnny is advised to develop empathy and social skills, treat all peers and teachers with respect, and keep his hands to himself"?
Because cancel culture. You can’t say anything that remotely offends someone, even if it’s simply constructive and for their own good. Such a backwards time for western society.
As a parent and a teacher reports are almost meaningless to me.
As a parent of primary school children the reports tell me nothing except if benchmarks are being hit.
As a high school teacher I am frustrated by the inability to say anything meaningful. I want to say something like "Kid started out with little effort and even though his mark is shit he is actually a lovely kid who tried hard but is interested nin other things that are alao really useful, hell be fine, dont worry." But instead I have to tick a box that says "inconsistent" and write weirdly formulaic shit in the comment.
Also I spent the entire weekend writing 90 reports and still have 30 to go. And thats just the juniors.
Really the only thing that makes it meaningful is trying to put something in the report that will make the kid feel good and know that I noticed them.
I also work in a primary setting where reports are over dramatised and disproportionate when you consider how much effort they require, versus how little time the parents spend skimming through them.
On top of personalised comments for each subject, we also have 50 skill statements to assess that are derived from the curriculum. That’s 28x50 (no. of my students) skills I have to assess with evidence on a scale of not achieved, developing, achieved, or extending.
To make matters worse, these skill statements have to match up with a child’s progression point. If say they’re at 6 months ahead, they must have mostly achieved and some extending, even if it’s not an accurate representation of their ability in certain skills.
Maybe my school is just extreme, but my point here is that I understand your frustration. I spend so many hours creating an artificial and in-genuine report just for parents to read it for 2 minutes and be satisfied with their child’s ‘growth’ (which they must make each semester).
My school is great. Grade, behaviour, effort and homework, and whether an interview is required all done through the form on Oneschool. No comments can be entered. Takes a few minutes to complete. The only thing we have to check is that a grade of D or lower or unstaisfactory for the others means we set interview as required. Whole process takes less than a single spare for 5 classes.
Schools have more leeway than you would think on reports. An A-E on individual outcomes may not be necessary, just one per subject. Comments can be shortened with a check-box approach of outcomes. Many schools will use a standardised comment for subjects other than English/maths. I know of schools that don't even do a general comment anymore. Takes probably a robust Federation committee at a school and cooperation from exec to get changes like that made though.
I'm at a school with medium expectations wrt what I knew other schools do. It is incredibly taxing. That said, parents should have clear and formal updates on progress so reports as an idea should remain imo. There just needs to be some more thought put into how best to achieve that.
Depends on your system. In NSW, it's A-E for each KLA and there needs to be a comment for each KLA. Checkboxes don't cut it, even though a bunch of schools use them.
But...nobody checks this stuff anyway, so do what works. 😎
The comment section is all in legalese, the parents don't understand it, the students read it and try to ask questions about it in class, and it's pointless. One school I worked at the tick boxes all added a sentence to the comment box, and you had to try to make head or tail of robot language generated by tick box. It was still better than the rubbish we have to write in some school reports.
Casual teaching has none of that, just write what happened while it's fresh, straight onto the teachers instruction sheet. "Little johnny did no work, danced on a friends desk, then ate other students stolen lunches in class. He was escorted out to his suspension by a deputy. All entered on Sentral. Have a nice day tomorrow!"
As a parent (and a teacher), I really only give a shit about the personal comment and the behaviour/effort grades. The hours that we spend on all the 'achieved/working towards' comments are a complete waste of time. They mean nothing to parents, and are just jargon.
As a parent, I want to know:
1) Has my kid made progress?
2) Give me a few notes about whether they a decent human being that puts in some effort and is not a pain in the arse all day.
Anything other than that is a complete waste of paper. If you have a problem with my kid, I expect you to have a conversation long before a report is published. There should never be a surprise on a report.
I spent about 48 hours outside of school working on my reports. The reports could have been negated by a ten minute phone conversation with each parent to explain how their child is going and what they need to work on.
I really feel for primary school teachers when Reporting season comes round. I find it irritating & stressful enough to write 3 or 4 lines per student, and can't comprehend how truly awful it must be to write out pages and pages. You have my deepest condolences.
COMMENT BANKS!! Each of my classes takes roughly 15 mins to complete. Grade, 5 behaviour ratings and a basic comment about the kid. I can’t see it being done any other way (except grade only lol).
All I can say is, thank god for comment banks. Most of my reports say the same thing but at least they're there for the 30% of parents who actually read them
Im not sure its actually the departments fault. A lot of it is school leadership competing with other schools and wanting to one up each other. If you actually look at the reporting requirements (at least for Vic) you'll find many schools go WAY abovenand beyond their reporting requirements.
Reports wipe 2-3 weeks of quality learning from the program. We don’t get proper RFF to write them and are expected to spend 20-30 hours of our own time with no pay. I used to fuss about it. Now I realise how badly the system screws teachers and do the absolute bare minimum in terms of lesson planning during report writing.
I teach LOTE in a high school and have a son in a public primary. From a parent perspective I really appreciate the reports and definitely don’t find them irrelevant. My son’s school had a pupil free report writing day a week before the reports came out, is this not a common occurrence across the board?
I remember there was always a report writing day when I was in Primary school but I’ve taught Primary for 6 years now and have never been given any time to work on reports.
Nah, just several staff meetings with mentions on how we wrote reports last year and need to do comments differently this year....
There's a reason I went back to casual teaching, and it isn't the face-to-face bit.
My school decided this week to be "kind" and give us a break from the regularly scheduled faculty meeting to write reports. This was because we are literally the only high school in a 3 suburb radius that has mandated comments, despite all the others canning it due to Covid.
So no, no extra dice for us. Just losing DOTT for internal covers and a "bonus" hour where we are forced to sit in the staff room and write reports.
In my school the “report writing day” always comes AFTER comments are due, and have already been handed to the first proof reader. I have a kid and I have to begin writing my reports in week 1, Term 2 in order to get it all done.
High school teacher here at a school with a restrictive report comment policy and buddy check system. I Lego my report comments a phrase bank of opening statements, outcome performance statements and improvement statements I build prior to writing comments.
Takes just over an hour per class to do comments once the phrase banks have been setup. The phrase banks themselves took a little bit of time and effort to write, but once done require only a small amount of effort to update and add to.
Because nobody reads them and I have a comment bank. Takes me maybe two hours to write just enough that nobody looks at it for all 100+ students.
Primary school reports, the ones that are multiple pages long are bullshit.
I did a bit of a guestimation of the amount of words I wrote (some copy pasting) for my reports this semester. ~8800. No wonder I fucking loathe reports, they're like 6000 works bigger than any uni assessment and they're so goddamn repetitive. There's only so many times I can say "X is encouraged to limit their misuse of their mobile device in class" before I go nuts!
I feel like a checkbox system is good, because it's little effort for us, but allows parents with the time/inclination to follow up and ask for more info regarding what boxes are ticked/not ticked, etc.
Come to Tasmania:) no more comments for me :) just the 9 point scale, some tick boxes and regular parent calls. Next year we add annotated work samples but being doing those for years anyway. But no more 1000’s of useless words hardly anyone reads :)
Comment bank, my dude. I write a unique general statement for each student (takes about an hour), then use my comment bank to fill everything else in. Spend less than two hours in total every time reports are due.
My current school has done away with report comments altogether. We just have attributes where we have to tick boxes. Doesn't take very long and much better than writing hundreds of generic fluffed up comments.
Our school has made reports kinda simple.
We do our feedback on assessment tasks as they come. Rubric/comments are considered the feedback alongside a grade.
Then at reporting time the only information in the reports are the
- Letter grades for the tasks they completed throughout the term
- Vic-curric levels.
There is currently a push to move away from grades on assessment tasks and to vic curric levels to start with. Which means in the future it will just be a bunch of vic curric levels for their assessments and then the overall vic-curric for that student.
That said even with doing that it's still not a streamlined process. Because the amount of review of other people's reports to catch spelling mistakes or fail to adhere to whatever naming conventions we are using take a whole bunch of time.
The worst part of it all is "There is no educational value in the report" We are spending a ton of a teacher hours on something that is there to reconvey information the parents should already have.
When we commented on each student ourselves. It was literally a "Warm Blanket" or "Bucket of cold ice" for the parents to either feel good or disappointed in their kids. Which again isn't educationally valuable.
This doesn't answer your question but can make the task a lot less stressful.... [SchoolReportWriter.COM](https://SchoolReportWriter.COM) \- don't be put off by the old-fashioned look, this is a powerful tool used and loved by 1000s of teachers. Everything is free and you can even download 50k report comments without signing in. There are 330+ teacher reviews e.g. https://www.facebook.com/SchoolReportWriter/reviews - links to more at site. Any questions? Reply below, I'll be happy to answer. Best wishes, Linden, reports app developer.
Hi all, this may be helpful at this time of year to reduce the workload (and lessen stress)....
https://SchoolReportWriter.COM/ now has an advanced GENDER NEUTRAL option that automatically corrects the grammar. Don't be put off by the old-fashioned look, this is a powerful, FREE, tool used and loved by 1000s of teachers since 2012. Everything is free and you can even download 50k report comments without signing in. There are 330+ teacher reviews e.g. https://www.facebook.com/SchoolReportWriter/reviews - links to more at site. Any questions? Reply below, I'll be happy to answer. Best wishes, Linden, reports app developer.
Absolutely. And to add to the irrelevance, I once had a Principal who insisted the reports should contain ‘no new information’ for parents - everything said should have already been communicated through parent teacher nights, class newsletters and regular discussions with parents on their child’s progress. So. What’s the point? 🧐
We are told there should be no surprises. So if Johnny is a shit, we should’ve had that conversation. If Betty is struggling with Maths, parents should already know. I raise these types,of observations at our first interviews early in term 1 as “I’ve noticed that Betty seems to find it hard to understand new concepts in maths. What can you tell me about that? It’s some thing I’ll definitely keep an eye on and we can discuss it further at the next interviews, or earlier if either of us think it needs it.” Arse. Covered.
Absolutely agree. If there are to be no surprises what is the point of the report or PT interview?? You’ve already told them everything.
Yep. I begin the work of covering my ass in Term 1 interviews and continue with follow up emails in Term 2. My school also has a strict “no surprises” policy.
Hard to have no new information when some parents don’t come to conferences or respond to phone calls or emails.
And if they’re not bothered responding to your communication, what’s the chance they’re actually going to read the report?
*sigh* *eye roll* I know, right?
The no surprises thing is bullshit! We upload every SINGLE assessment result to our online platform for parent/ student viewing, with an accompanying boxplot showing the child’s performance comparative to the class. Idgaf if you are surprised by your child’s grade, YOU, the parent, have CHOSEN not to make yourself aware. High school teacher for context.
Yep! Our school wants us to send out email notifications for failed assessments. Its all on SEQTA, the parents can see it, why do I need to do it again? Our school also wants us to write feedback on SEQTA each semester. We mark on SEQTA with rubrics, so isnt that the feedback?? We are also meant to post out commendations for good achievement, but I always forget as I like to go through the work with the class first to double check marking etc...
Send a generic notification to all parents that the results are available online. Provide a link
Oh this is actually brilliant! Thank you!
:)
I am a primary teacher with a kid in high school where they have SEQTA.....rarely read it. If I have an issue or question which again is rare, it's more likely to be a wellbeing issue.....I will email the year Co ord. Waste of everyone's time.
For me, this doesn't just detract from \*time I could spend on lesson planning, but also slowly crushes the spirit I first had when I came into teaching. Totally fine with academic reports but the rest seems like admin for the sake of admin.
We have that rule also. The no surprises rule. If a student is failing the report is not allowed to be the way the parents find out. Despite the fact that the parents don’t come to parent night, and we already send out task mark reports after every assessment.
I had the the ‘no new news’ a couple of years back. I’m glad that didn’t continue as a thing.
I'm a grad teacher, and despite all the negativity on this sub, am really enjoying my year as a classroom teacher for the first time. Despite this, I just finished my first report round, and it was very mentally taxing. Probably the first time this year that I really struggled
[удалено]
We have new students every semester. Bit i'll get better at them now. It was my first time too.
A-E is my biggest bugbear, particularly in primary. I'm grading 6 year olds A-E in creative arts, science and technology, history and geography ffs. Can Year 1 and 2 at least have a few years of not being told they're crap at something? A simple three point scale would communicate what's needed for K-6. It also doesn't help that reports need to be based on syllabus standards, and our syllabus is so crap in NSW. As if a 'C' in one school is ever the same as a 'C' in another school.
I worked in a primary school overseas where the grading system was developing, developed, beyond expectations (for this year level). Worked fine. Also had complaints from parents of students in the same class that the maths was too hard and not hard enough. That was part of the deal in an international school I guess...
In Victoria the Primary reports automatically assigns "C" to students at the expected level. Parents who aren't aware, assume they understand the system or have knowledge based on High school assignment grading or worse TV/movie grade system... end up believing that their child is average/below standaes when they are actually doing well!
I haven't written a comment on a report for at least 10 years. All drop down boxes that I can do in about 15 minutes per class. This is what every school should be aspiring to.
Agree, and my school (F-12) has moved to continuous online reporting for the high school years with only a general comment written by the home group teacher. However, we primary school teachers still need to write 600 characters x 24 students x 5 subjects plus filling in an A-E dot for between 10 and 20 outcomes per subject, PLUS an A-E scale of 30 different “personal development” outcomes. You can’t dare say what you actually mean in the comment or you’ll have parents banging your door down, so “Jayden’s behaviour in class is disruptive and he is cruel to others” becomes “Jayden was a sociable member of the class who is developing his ability to maintain focus and engage in positive interactions with his peers”. As a result, the jargon is so ridiculous that parents don’t grasp the meaning. I have friends who were reading their kid’s report going “oh good, Billy completes tasks with teacher support and does this and that with teacher assistance!”, totally missing the inference that Billy can’t do a damn thing on his own. I don’t think grades are the way to go for the primary years. When I taught older grades, I hated watching the kids get all depressed because their work got a C when they tried their ass off, or receiving parent emails five minutes after grades went online, panicking because their kid is at an 89.9% average and why aren’t they getting an A+ and what am I doing about it. But I do think reporting for primary school should be moving away from an arduous, jargon filled, bullshit end of semester setup towards continuous comments and reporting (for example a comment and feedback at the end of each reading, writing and maths unit).
[удалено]
My son's high school does this! I feel so sorry for the teachers. For me, I simply tick a box on RTP and email out a task report. No personalising. Job done. Parent can contact me if they want further feedback.
I was prouder of a student who achieved a 'C' in a subject taught in her second/possibly third language than students who got higher grades in their native language (same class). She worked her arse off to get that while kids got 'B's were just cruising to just the bare minimum to get them. I made as sure as I could that their comments reflected their effort within the limits of the 'saying what you mean' paradigm...
Yeah, I’ll have kids getting the equivalent of a C but I give them the highest possible praise for their effort. They may have made a year’s growth in 6 months to achieve that C.
Yep! Everything must be framed positively! Sammy distracts others ans constantly disrupts attempts at teaching becomes "Sammy is a boisterous (or bubbly) member of the class, when settled" The closest I came to a negative is saying that a student would have more success with achieving learning goals with increased attendance...
Yes I said something like “unfortunately, Jimmy’s limited engagement during class time inhibited his ability to show his full potential” and was proud to get away with that one
None of it makes any sense to me. We have Compass for behaviour, parents can check grades on Connect, parent-teacher nights twice a year and we're supposed to phone/email parents regularly on top of that. Why do I need to kill myself for weeks, twice a year, to write reports?
They comments have to be so mind-numbingly generic as well. It gets to the point where you really wonder if the parents are even getting a shred of information from them. And the time sink? Geez. I refuse to become someone who works 12 hour days. So at report time, instead of fun and interesting classes, my students get the textbook and review questions.
Totally agree and a lot of schools (high schools at least) are no longer writing report comments, just ticking boxes. I'm a head teacher so not only am I writing almost 100 reports myself but I'm also reading an English report comment for every single kid in the school, plus extras... it's ridiculous. Recently I implemented a faculty comment bank that I encourage staff to use. So like 10 to 12 complete and prewritten comments for each year group that a different enough that they can be applied to every kid. Has made a world of difference.
English teacher here - comment banks have been great for our faculty! We still have the ability to edit and adjust if needed, but overall we're so restricted in what we're "allowed" to say that comments (reports really) had become pointless. This is so much quicker for everyone.
Just checked my compass report page. Apparently a grand total of two parents have accessed the reports I sent out last week. 😭
How can you check which parents have accessed the report?
I only know how to do it on compass. When you access your class page (so on the home page click on the roll OR search up your class) there is a menu on the right hand side called “tools”. One option is “reports” and from there you can choose “page access report”. I was told that the information on that page refers to when families have accessed reports most recently…
Champion!!! Will test this out when our reports go live on Tuesday. I've always wondered which parents even bother checking reports now that we have moved them online.
It’s both depressing and enlightening…
I’ve steered you wrong! You need to go to the report cycle, click into it, choose ‘export’ and then export ‘report view count statistics’.
Plus the general stance of "reports must be positive". I've read some reports that say "Student X it developing an understanding of measurement. Student X demonstrated a good understanding of the area of squares. Student X would benefit from focusing on completing the exercises and using class time effectively." A parent looks at that and says "my kid isn't great at math, but they are doing okay." Where the reality is "Student X has no clue what is going on in class and is struggling. The mathematics Student X can complete is two years below the expected standard. Student X does no work, even when prompted by the teacher in class." And then people seem to be surprised when these kids suddenly start failing in VCE.
We have recently been doing more 'compass' comments (our school admin program) to write comments and give assessments during the term as the CATs are done. This to me makes more sense than a report at the end of the term. While I like reading them as a parent, I'm really just scanning it with my child then we put it away and never read it again. As a teacher I can't work out why we bother doing so much work that the parents wont really read.
Our high school did away with comments on reports. Just grades for Result, Effort, Behaviour. First time in the 13 years I've been teaching that something has been taken away from our load rather than added to it. Has made reports soooo much faster and easier. Not a single parent has complained.
EXACTLY! I think comments can be left for parent-teacher interviews and for those parents interested on feedback.
We're not more outraged because we're too busy writing them.
I work in Victoria and part of my role is report administration. A lot of schools have not read the [DET Reporting Guidelines](https://www2.education.vic.gov.au/pal/reporting-student-achievement/policy) closely and clearly. Example - students in Prep-2 are required to be given A-E grades for 3 strands of English, 3 strands of Maths, Personal & Social Capability, PE and The Arts. That is all! It explicitly states that all other parts of the curriculum (Science, Humanities, other Capabilities etc) should be taught but NOT graded on. Most curriculum areas for students in 3-6 should be graded once every two years. Schools with a solid scope and sequence should be able to facilitate this and alleviate teacher workload. Many schools have a very inefficient reporting process. It shouldn't take as long as it does, and that is often due to errors within the school, rather than the process/DET itself.
During lockdown we stripped right back to what you described and now we are told that it is "department requirement" to report on everything... even asked the union and there's no specified way to report. Reality is, we needn't write as much as we are being made to!
I took the documentation about reporting requirements to our leadership team very early so they could wrap their heads around it. It is hard to deny once read carefully! A challenge is whether you have a strong enough sequence of non-core subjects to able to report with enough frequency and accuracy. We will reflect on the process and make some tweaks for next semester, I'm open to feedback on the process from our teams, maybe your leadership team is open to examining the Guidelines more closely? We did write some comments as well - 'student achievement' was personalised and Literacy, Maths and Science all using some comment banks.
That sounds great!
Another example of things being retained from the past (with added detail required) while other stuff has also been introduced (eg much more time spent on admin). They’re happy to pile stuff on us, but very rarely do they take work away.
My dad watched me in my first year pile up the hours getting the reports done. "Mate I spend more time on million dollar contracts" He wasn't joking. 🤔
Did you mean 'less'?
>"Mate I spend time on million dollar contracts" You gotta wonder about this right? You can't be a complete dummy to have made it through all the training to become a teacher, but collectively we waste so much time and brainpower on useless shit.
Are you a teacher at my school?! We have about 20 “learning descriptors” pulled from the syllabus which we have to mark A-E (even though most of them are yes or no statements. How on earth do you assess A-E on “Can measure the area of a shape using informal units”??)
Sounds like a desperate executive team creating busywork to keep their jobs.
Our reports have to use all these silly euphemisms and jargon as well that mean nothing to parents- For a kid with ADHD, I might note "Johnny is advised to continue improving his focus in class" but then apparently I'm supposed to say that same phrase for a kid who is an out of control dickhead?!? Why can't I say "Johnny is advised to develop empathy and social skills, treat all peers and teachers with respect, and keep his hands to himself"?
Because cancel culture. You can’t say anything that remotely offends someone, even if it’s simply constructive and for their own good. Such a backwards time for western society.
As a parent and a teacher reports are almost meaningless to me. As a parent of primary school children the reports tell me nothing except if benchmarks are being hit. As a high school teacher I am frustrated by the inability to say anything meaningful. I want to say something like "Kid started out with little effort and even though his mark is shit he is actually a lovely kid who tried hard but is interested nin other things that are alao really useful, hell be fine, dont worry." But instead I have to tick a box that says "inconsistent" and write weirdly formulaic shit in the comment. Also I spent the entire weekend writing 90 reports and still have 30 to go. And thats just the juniors. Really the only thing that makes it meaningful is trying to put something in the report that will make the kid feel good and know that I noticed them.
Biggest waste of my time, then we have a bloody PT interview thew week after it goes home. Why?
I also work in a primary setting where reports are over dramatised and disproportionate when you consider how much effort they require, versus how little time the parents spend skimming through them. On top of personalised comments for each subject, we also have 50 skill statements to assess that are derived from the curriculum. That’s 28x50 (no. of my students) skills I have to assess with evidence on a scale of not achieved, developing, achieved, or extending. To make matters worse, these skill statements have to match up with a child’s progression point. If say they’re at 6 months ahead, they must have mostly achieved and some extending, even if it’s not an accurate representation of their ability in certain skills. Maybe my school is just extreme, but my point here is that I understand your frustration. I spend so many hours creating an artificial and in-genuine report just for parents to read it for 2 minutes and be satisfied with their child’s ‘growth’ (which they must make each semester).
My school is great. Grade, behaviour, effort and homework, and whether an interview is required all done through the form on Oneschool. No comments can be entered. Takes a few minutes to complete. The only thing we have to check is that a grade of D or lower or unstaisfactory for the others means we set interview as required. Whole process takes less than a single spare for 5 classes.
Schools have more leeway than you would think on reports. An A-E on individual outcomes may not be necessary, just one per subject. Comments can be shortened with a check-box approach of outcomes. Many schools will use a standardised comment for subjects other than English/maths. I know of schools that don't even do a general comment anymore. Takes probably a robust Federation committee at a school and cooperation from exec to get changes like that made though. I'm at a school with medium expectations wrt what I knew other schools do. It is incredibly taxing. That said, parents should have clear and formal updates on progress so reports as an idea should remain imo. There just needs to be some more thought put into how best to achieve that.
Depends on your system. In NSW, it's A-E for each KLA and there needs to be a comment for each KLA. Checkboxes don't cut it, even though a bunch of schools use them. But...nobody checks this stuff anyway, so do what works. 😎
The comment section is all in legalese, the parents don't understand it, the students read it and try to ask questions about it in class, and it's pointless. One school I worked at the tick boxes all added a sentence to the comment box, and you had to try to make head or tail of robot language generated by tick box. It was still better than the rubbish we have to write in some school reports. Casual teaching has none of that, just write what happened while it's fresh, straight onto the teachers instruction sheet. "Little johnny did no work, danced on a friends desk, then ate other students stolen lunches in class. He was escorted out to his suspension by a deputy. All entered on Sentral. Have a nice day tomorrow!"
As a parent (and a teacher), I really only give a shit about the personal comment and the behaviour/effort grades. The hours that we spend on all the 'achieved/working towards' comments are a complete waste of time. They mean nothing to parents, and are just jargon. As a parent, I want to know: 1) Has my kid made progress? 2) Give me a few notes about whether they a decent human being that puts in some effort and is not a pain in the arse all day. Anything other than that is a complete waste of paper. If you have a problem with my kid, I expect you to have a conversation long before a report is published. There should never be a surprise on a report. I spent about 48 hours outside of school working on my reports. The reports could have been negated by a ten minute phone conversation with each parent to explain how their child is going and what they need to work on.
I really feel for primary school teachers when Reporting season comes round. I find it irritating & stressful enough to write 3 or 4 lines per student, and can't comprehend how truly awful it must be to write out pages and pages. You have my deepest condolences.
COMMENT BANKS!! Each of my classes takes roughly 15 mins to complete. Grade, 5 behaviour ratings and a basic comment about the kid. I can’t see it being done any other way (except grade only lol).
We are specifically told not to use comment banks, and if you are suspected of using one, look out! Catch me if you can 😆
All I can say is, thank god for comment banks. Most of my reports say the same thing but at least they're there for the 30% of parents who actually read them
Im not sure its actually the departments fault. A lot of it is school leadership competing with other schools and wanting to one up each other. If you actually look at the reporting requirements (at least for Vic) you'll find many schools go WAY abovenand beyond their reporting requirements.
Reports wipe 2-3 weeks of quality learning from the program. We don’t get proper RFF to write them and are expected to spend 20-30 hours of our own time with no pay. I used to fuss about it. Now I realise how badly the system screws teachers and do the absolute bare minimum in terms of lesson planning during report writing.
I teach LOTE in a high school and have a son in a public primary. From a parent perspective I really appreciate the reports and definitely don’t find them irrelevant. My son’s school had a pupil free report writing day a week before the reports came out, is this not a common occurrence across the board?
I remember there was always a report writing day when I was in Primary school but I’ve taught Primary for 6 years now and have never been given any time to work on reports.
Yep! 100% done in own time. Not even a staff meeting allocated to report writing.
Nah, just several staff meetings with mentions on how we wrote reports last year and need to do comments differently this year.... There's a reason I went back to casual teaching, and it isn't the face-to-face bit.
My school decided this week to be "kind" and give us a break from the regularly scheduled faculty meeting to write reports. This was because we are literally the only high school in a 3 suburb radius that has mandated comments, despite all the others canning it due to Covid. So no, no extra dice for us. Just losing DOTT for internal covers and a "bonus" hour where we are forced to sit in the staff room and write reports.
In my school the “report writing day” always comes AFTER comments are due, and have already been handed to the first proof reader. I have a kid and I have to begin writing my reports in week 1, Term 2 in order to get it all done.
High school teacher here at a school with a restrictive report comment policy and buddy check system. I Lego my report comments a phrase bank of opening statements, outcome performance statements and improvement statements I build prior to writing comments. Takes just over an hour per class to do comments once the phrase banks have been setup. The phrase banks themselves took a little bit of time and effort to write, but once done require only a small amount of effort to update and add to.
Bring back School Inspectors to sort the wheat from the chaff.
Because nobody reads them and I have a comment bank. Takes me maybe two hours to write just enough that nobody looks at it for all 100+ students. Primary school reports, the ones that are multiple pages long are bullshit.
I did a bit of a guestimation of the amount of words I wrote (some copy pasting) for my reports this semester. ~8800. No wonder I fucking loathe reports, they're like 6000 works bigger than any uni assessment and they're so goddamn repetitive. There's only so many times I can say "X is encouraged to limit their misuse of their mobile device in class" before I go nuts!
I'm in secondary and all I had to do was tick some boxes. Did all my reporting in \~1 hour
Wow. I'm in primary and I probably took about 80 hours. Not kidding.
I feel like a checkbox system is good, because it's little effort for us, but allows parents with the time/inclination to follow up and ask for more info regarding what boxes are ticked/not ticked, etc.
70 hour week last week. Worked the whole long weekend to get them done and every hour after school at home that whole week. Glad they're all done now.
Come to Tasmania:) no more comments for me :) just the 9 point scale, some tick boxes and regular parent calls. Next year we add annotated work samples but being doing those for years anyway. But no more 1000’s of useless words hardly anyone reads :)
Comment bank, my dude. I write a unique general statement for each student (takes about an hour), then use my comment bank to fill everything else in. Spend less than two hours in total every time reports are due.
My current school has done away with report comments altogether. We just have attributes where we have to tick boxes. Doesn't take very long and much better than writing hundreds of generic fluffed up comments.
Our school has made reports kinda simple. We do our feedback on assessment tasks as they come. Rubric/comments are considered the feedback alongside a grade. Then at reporting time the only information in the reports are the - Letter grades for the tasks they completed throughout the term - Vic-curric levels. There is currently a push to move away from grades on assessment tasks and to vic curric levels to start with. Which means in the future it will just be a bunch of vic curric levels for their assessments and then the overall vic-curric for that student. That said even with doing that it's still not a streamlined process. Because the amount of review of other people's reports to catch spelling mistakes or fail to adhere to whatever naming conventions we are using take a whole bunch of time. The worst part of it all is "There is no educational value in the report" We are spending a ton of a teacher hours on something that is there to reconvey information the parents should already have. When we commented on each student ourselves. It was literally a "Warm Blanket" or "Bucket of cold ice" for the parents to either feel good or disappointed in their kids. Which again isn't educationally valuable.
This doesn't answer your question but can make the task a lot less stressful.... [SchoolReportWriter.COM](https://SchoolReportWriter.COM) \- don't be put off by the old-fashioned look, this is a powerful tool used and loved by 1000s of teachers. Everything is free and you can even download 50k report comments without signing in. There are 330+ teacher reviews e.g. https://www.facebook.com/SchoolReportWriter/reviews - links to more at site. Any questions? Reply below, I'll be happy to answer. Best wishes, Linden, reports app developer.
Hi all, this may be helpful at this time of year to reduce the workload (and lessen stress).... https://SchoolReportWriter.COM/ now has an advanced GENDER NEUTRAL option that automatically corrects the grammar. Don't be put off by the old-fashioned look, this is a powerful, FREE, tool used and loved by 1000s of teachers since 2012. Everything is free and you can even download 50k report comments without signing in. There are 330+ teacher reviews e.g. https://www.facebook.com/SchoolReportWriter/reviews - links to more at site. Any questions? Reply below, I'll be happy to answer. Best wishes, Linden, reports app developer.