End of Year Reports

Although I never enjoyed writing reports when I was a class teacher, I must confess that I do miss reading and commenting on them as a head. I spent a good few evenings doing that every year around this time, though, and whilst I was reading, I would wonder if the vast number of hours each teacher spent on writing them was actually a good use of their time. Early in my leadership career, I decided that it wasn't, but I don't think I got any further than that in terms of devising a better idea. So, with 12 months' distance now from the classroom, I want to revisit that today and see if I can come up with a proposal that would fulfil three criteria.

1. Manageable for teachers in terms of time
2. Useful for parents
3. Fulfils statutory school responsibilities

Let's get number three out of the way first, as it is the easiest to cover. In the guidance for schools on writing statutory end-of-year reports for parents, it states:

"By the end of each summer term, headteachers must send parents a written report on their child’s progress for the academic year, unless that pupil will receive a school leaver’s report."

and for leavers it states:

"Headteachers must provide a school leaver’s report containing brief particulars of the pupil’s progress and achievements in subjects and activities forming part of the school curriculum."

For the first group of children, the word 'progress' does a lot of the heavy lifting. As we know, progress is very different from attainment. We will come back to that in addressing the other two points.

For all children, the guidance states that end-of-year reports must include "brief particulars of achievements, highlighting strengths and developmental needs". Again, there is no explicit reference to attainment, and the inclusion of the words "brief" and "highlighting" is an important signifier of what is expected.

From this guidance, we can see that most schools have fallen into the usual trap of assuming that there is more 'statutory' content than there actually is. Schools often do this, don't they?

So, we can definitely cut back on what we do and free up some teacher time to cover criterion one in my list of three. But what do we cut back on?

To decide that, we need to examine what information parents actually want and what information they either don't understand because it is written in teacher-speak, or simply don't care about.

Ten years ago, I would have told you that this was easy. I would have said that parents wanted to know their children were happy, behaving well, and making good progress in reading, writing, and maths. Now, I am not so sure. Of course, schools need to be accountable to parents, but the balance seems to have shifted a little too far. I hate to blame the pandemic for this, but I'm sure it didn't help the situation. When I was a head, I always believed that I worked 'for' the children, but the culture now seems to dictate that schools work 'for' the parents, which is a shame. And don't get me started on the situation with children who have additional needs, as that is a whole other kettle of potatoes!

So, to reduce teacher workload and also to protect teachers, I propose that no attainment or achievement data of any kind be shared in end-of-year reports, except for leavers. Informal attainment, such as whether national expectations have been met, should be shared during parents' evenings, and reports should focus entirely on progress.

It is also essential to define progress not as what a child has experienced this year, which is a measure of curriculum coverage, but rather as the knowledge and skills that they have assimilated over the last 12 months. This approach reduces teacher workload when writing reports. It also means that teachers will focus on a narrower range of subjects (the belief that every subject needs to be covered is not true). They should write about less, but in more depth.

This approach also ensures that reporting on the social side of school can be given the focus that it deserves. Despite my cynical comment earlier in this post, I am sure that the majority of parents still value this information, and that some value it above all else.

Teachers put their hearts and souls into writing reports, at least the ones who work in schools where reports are not autogenerated from assessment platforms do. They should be supported to do this in the most efficient way possible and not forced to breaking point when they are already exhausted from a long, hard year.