‘Why it’s time to consider abolishing report writing’

In the age of electronic communication, is there really any need for the termly message back to parents, asks one teacher
7th April 2016, 6:01pm

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‘Why it’s time to consider abolishing report writing’

https://www.tes.com/magazine/archive/why-its-time-consider-abolishing-report-writing
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Reports are considered so integral to schooling in the public consciousness that it seems hard to imagine a time without them, in the past or in the future. When did they become such an ingrained part of the system?

For the oldest public schools, a pupil would be delivered to the institution a boy and emerge years later as a man, with little parental interaction in between. A report card must have been just that - a “report” apprising parents of their child’s position at school, as military dispatches might deliver news of the latest battle in the war.

Nowadays, the picture is very different. Parental contact is regular, through individual subject teachers and schools’ middle and senior management. The advent of email means that many teachers answer queries from home on a daily basis, and parents are free to make any inquiries concerning their offspring, from academic performance to social matters. Perhaps reports have become superfluous. Should we continue to provide them simply because they are expected?

The problem with reports

Certainly, the production of reports gives rise to numerous problems for teachers. If they are all written at the end of term, a frantic week ensues where feedback must be composed for hundreds of students, and day-to-day teaching can suffer. If spread out across the term, they inevitably fall at the wrong times, with some pupils requiring them too soon to judge their performance properly, and others receiving them too late for them to be useful.

Wording reports is also a perilous business, as one balances the need for encouragement and recognition of success with having to give honest criticism and point out areas for improvement. A pointed remark could cause offence, but an overly bland report runs the greater risk of failing to draw a parent’s attention to a crucial issue. Then, of course, there are lengthy procedures for correcting grammatical errors and collating reports before they can go out to parents - by which point, the information in them may be out of date or no longer correct.

I would support the abolition of school reports in favour of parents’ evenings. They are efficient and closely targeted.

It is important that form tutors and heads of year gain an overall picture of students’ progress. Meetings about pupil development are constructive and should continue. I would, however, suggest that in the age of electronic communication and almost continuous parental involvement, school reports themselves no longer serve any useful purpose.

Ed Clarke is head of classics at Highfield School, Hampshire, and author of Variatio: a scholarship Latin course

This is an edited version of an article in tomorrow’s TES magazine. Subscribers can read the full article hereTES magazine is available in all good newsagents. To download the digital edition, Android users can click here and iOS users can click here

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