Amid end-of-year classroom clean outs and final lessons, the last few weeks of term for teachers involve all important school report writing.
The handwritten comments of days gone by are no more, and now details of a child’s progress tend to come in the form of computer-generated documents.
This change has led to a string of complaints this year with parents bemoaning silly mistakes and stock answers slipping through the net. According to one Mumsnet contributor her two daughters in different years brought home school reports with nearly identical comments.
Teachers have views on this too. Alex Ogg, who until recently worked as an English teacher in a number of secondary schools, said he was not a fan of using computer software for this. He said it was introduced to ease teacher workload, but has ended up leaving educators frustrated as the computer-generated options do not always capture what they want to say.
Anne Lyons, the headteacher of St John Fisher Catholic primary school in Pinner, north-west London, says her school doesn’t like producing generic computer reports and she makes sure all documents that are sent around are proofread thoroughly.
We would like to hear teachers’ views about annual report writing. Is there still a place for it in schools? What’s the best way to write reports? Is technology a hindrance? Are teachers expected to write too many reports? How do they put them together? Is the process outmoded? How much time and effort is put in?
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