ABSTRACT
According to a DFEE circular from March 1996, all pupil reports should include ‘brief particulars’ of a pupil’s progress in subjects that should take the form of a short commentary on the pupil’s progress in the subject. The circular states that strengths and particular achievements should be highlighted, together with any particular weaknesses, possibly expressed as targets for development. In other words, the old favourite, that little Billy enjoyed looking at the Tudors, is no longer anywhere near sufficient. OFSTED support this move towards more informative report writing, and have actively sought it out during inspections, making significant mentions depending on a school’s effectiveness in reporting properly. This leads to a large problem for some schools, who do not have any assessment procedures in place for foundation subjects. How on earth can a teacher remember the achievements of one of their class in a topic finished in October? One way is to look back through each child’s book, but this is exceptionally time consuming. A better alternative would be a brief look at the assessment sheet outlined above, and an accurate report of each child’s abilities in the Key Elements. For example, going back to the Year 3 child who has used the terms ‘ancient’ and ‘BC’ correctly, the teacher would be able to write that the child is able to use an increasing range of dates and terms relating to the passing of time. If the child did not use the terms correctly, then this could be an area of development, that the child must work on, so the teacher could write something like, ‘the child needs to work hard at developing an understanding of terms used to show the passing of time, such as ancient and BC’. In this way, your assessment procedure informs not only the teacher, but the parents as well, and fulfils all the requirements of the DFEE circular, and OFSTED. The best examples of reports written have the Key Elements in mind, and are written in a way that is parent friendly, in that the comments include reference to the work that has actually been done in class. It is important to remember that while as teachers we have requirements to fulfil, such as the DFEE circular, we must also not lose sight of who reports are for. Parents will not glean anything useful from a list of Key Elements achieved, without any context. They will, however, find the skills that must be reported useful when placed in the context of the work actually being done in school as their children may well have talked about the topic at home.
