FarehamPeople on school reports - are they what they used to be?

It is rapidly approaching the end of the academic year in Fareham and most of us will soon, if we haven't already, receive a report from our child's school. It's natural to wonder (worry about?) how your child is doing at school, and as parents it is important that we have accurate information about their progress. But how much consideration should we give to their school reports in this day when 'All children must win - there can be no losers.'?

In my day I remember my school report being a list of the classic 'Good, but could try harder's with a few 'Talks too much in the classroom's thrown in. Here are some comments from an excellent article written by Edward Collier that appeared in The Guardian in February this year:

Edward, a now self-confessed middle aged man, had found a collection of his school reports dating from the late 1960s when he was aged 8–12. Some of the comments contained therein are as follows:

Untidy, casual and insufficient (age 9)

Has not learned to concentrate his attention on anything yet (age 9)

Work is too brief, casual and untidily executed (age 11)

Edward tries sometimes, but most of the time is satisfied with as little work as possible (age 11)

Has no idea how to be helpful, and the thought of work appals him (age 11)

Here, by way of contrast, are some excerpts from his sons' primary school reports with Edward's comments following in brackets:

F can play well with other children but sometimes finds co-operation with others in group work within the classroom difficult (age 10) [This is mealy-mouthed in the extreme.]

F has worked hard with the clarinet and was a valuable member of the school orchestra (age 10) [F never did a moment's practice, was scarcely able to open the case, and was no better at the end of the year than the start.]

T is clearly an avid reader. [It's a standing joke in the family that T would struggle to recognise a book, never mind actively decide to open one.]

T can be distracted by others at times. [This one is true, although it would probably be more accurate to say T can distract others at times.]

Reading from my own son's report for Writing:

P has worked hard on his handwriting and can now join and form letters correctly [He's 10]. He does however need to practice this regularly [...or he will forget...?] He can use a variety of sentence starters [What?] and is experimenting with commas but does not always use them correctly [??] and this will be his next target [Hm].

This tendency to tell us what our children have achieved against national curriculum targets doesn't really tell us what we need to know, which in my case is: is my child any good at writing? How is he doing compared to his peer group? Or even, what is a 'sentence starter'?

A good friend of mine is at the point where she needs to make an informed decision on which senior school to send her son to. This is her son who spells with 'whith' and when 'wen'. At his Parent consultation earlier in the year she was told her son was progressing extremely well and has made excellent progress. She's confused to say the least.

What do you think?