It will come as no surprise to teachers that parents are increasingly dissatisfied with “robotic” school reports. Long gone are the days when children used to get up at dawn to intercept the dreaded letter from their school, aimed with drone-like precision to obliterate the early promise of the holiday. Now parents read reports on their iPhones the moment they are written. There is no escape for the naughty child.
Except, of course, much of what is said these days is dull and impersonal: that naughty child can hide in the plain sight of bland statements. And that’s if they are read at all: I have taught many children who blithely admit that their parents never look at their reports. There are a number of reasons for this. Most obviously, teachers are in much more regular contact with parents by email now, so reports tend to just summarise what is already known.
Additionally, the software that has been brought in by schools –providing templates for busy teachers to insert names, change genders and adjust key stages and targets – has ironed out the more egregious errors in spelling, punctuation and grammar, but has also rendered the teacher’s voice impersonal and distant. As education becomes increasingly standardised and corporate in its language, so have the various outlets that attempt to articulate the progress schools are making in teaching and learning. Or, to put it another way, reports are often very boring to read.
There are exceptions, and as a school inspector (and parent) I have read reports that have deeply moved me because of the obvious respect and insight that the teacher has for the student they are writing about. However, too often, they convey very little. And when this happens they become almost meaningless, moving from an essential bridge between school and home to something that simply fulfils statutory requirements.
Why does this happen? Teachers have to write about hundreds of students in very little time; it is not surprising that many choose to copy and paste rather than write finely polished prose for each student. But there are more troubling reasons. Many teachers no longer feel that they can tell parents what they really think about their children. Of course, it is easy to write reports for able students who are getting A* in every subject and are clearly destined for Russell Group universities. It is more difficult to explain why a student is failing academically or behaving badly without reverting to euphemisms that appease the conscience of the teacher and provide enough wriggle room for the school should questions be asked by parents.
In the past I might have written that “David is rude and lazy and, if he carries on like this, will fail English”; now I am more likely to write that “David needs to have a more mature attitude in class, and take responsibility for his own learning; if he does not his potential in the subject will go unfulfilled”.
This is particularly useful when exam results come out: vague expressions and hedged phrases about academic prospects ensure that the school protects itself if a student’s final grades are not as good as the reports suggested. Cold, hard, predicted grades are difficult to argue over, but language provides some essential cover.
And then there is the desire not to offend, which might come from the teacher or might be an unstated policy. I know of some schools where teachers are only allowed to write reports that are positive and encouraging; to say something vaguely negative could be construed as inappropriate and potentially damaging to a student’s wellbeing. I imagine in the not-too-distant future reports will have to have “trigger warnings”; children and tutors will have to enter “safe spaces” to read them together in order to devise appropriate “strategies” to deal with such upsetting viewpoints.
But reports are too important to be made redundant and we should work to fix them. One way to do this would be to ban report-writing software from schools. A possible approach could be that schools provide parents with two reports a year (one at the start, one at the end); both are written by the form tutor and agreed by the student. The first outlines the agreed targets, the second reports on the year’s successes and failures.
Teachers could be consulted by form tutors over the year, but will no longer have to create a report on each pupil, relieving them of hours of repetitive writing. Form tutors could be given ring-fenced time to complete this work (and be paid for it). Each report would be signed off by senior management, which will encourage them to know the children in the school even better. Each of these more human, less labour-intensive reports could be underpinned with tracker graphs, using data that has already been collected, to show progress. The school could decide whether it wants to share this information with parents.
Reports that are bland, and composed in euphemisms, ultimately let down both school and student. Young people need clear, constructive guidance if they are to achieve. Too many reports today fail in this basic obligation.
Unless reports are reinvented for the 21st century, they risk becoming robotic, with all the rustiness and redundancy the term implies. We have the technology to make them more human.
David James is a deputy head in a leading independent school, and has taught English for 18 years. You can find him on Twitter @drdavidajames.
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