How did you used to treat your school report? Was it opened with bated breath, with the
family gathered round to read the summary of your progress over the past year? Was it
hidden at the bottom of your school bag, reluctantly dragged out as you awaited your
punishment for the truths written within? Was it passed around family members and
friends, who compared scores and grades? Maybe you had teachers who could be relied
upon to trot out the same phrases every year. Sometimes you wondered if they even
knew who you were, and other times you may have felt misunderstood: you weren’t
disruptive, it was just that the teacher didn’t like you.
Reports of old were allowed to be much more honest. If you were crap at chemistry, the teacher would report that you “struggled with the subject” or that it wasn’t one of your strongest points. If you were a pain in the butt, your teacher would write that you were “a nuisance” or that you “distracted the class”. But something happened between me being on the receiving end of these comments, and me getting to dish them out.
Everything now has to be so darn positive, so we never get to tell the parents
that their kid is a little bastard, but instead have to pick out their best qualities,
whatever they might be. Instead of Fiona being rude, answering back, and spending the
entire lesson chatting with her friends, we should be writing that she’s popular
amongst her peers, questioning, and willing to assert herself. If Jimmy spends the
lesson in a daze, not knowing his test tube from his Bunsen burner, he is reported
as being a quiet boy whose target is to ask for help when he doesn’t understand.
Should Alex be noisy and disruptive then he is “lively”. The whole procedure of
report writing has become an exercise in covert codes,
that would put Dan Brown and his "Da Vinci Code" to shame, with only fellow teachers
being able to read between the lines and build up a real picture of what the child
is like.
Of course there is a case for being positive, but why can’t we tell it like it is? No wonder parents find it hard to understand when their little darling gets in trouble or is put in detention: there were no warning signs in the end of year report, and they’ve been receiving mixed messages. I’ve even found myself pussy footing around like a professional politician at parents’ evenings, not daring to give a direct answer because the truth is the kid is a proper bugger in the lesson. It’s made me feel like I’m working in customer services, presenting a corporate image of the school rather than trying to help the child be more successful and become a more likeable person.
But now there are shifts in the reporting practice once more. For several years
now, schools have gradually taken on computerised reporting systems, where comments
are stored in “banks” and are chosen by clicking on them so that they fit into the
spaces that used to be reserved for best handwriting and well-chosen phrases. Some
may argue that teachers tended to write each report using their own stock of phrases
anyway, and it’s partially true. All those kids that got on with their work without a fuss were
“quiet and conscientious”, and those that tried but didn’t excel were often “putting
in an admirable effort”.
However, with computer based reporting I can no longer remark on the individuality that children bring to their classes, or accomplishments that are particular to them. Instead, I have stock phrases to choose from, depending on whether I have graded the child A, B or C. These phrases are so bland that they don’t actually say anything if you stare at them hard enough. Sometimes none of the comments really apply to the pupil, but I have to make my choice of a certain number from one section and a certain number from another. The reports don’t really seem to have much value any more. We called the old style “cheque book reports”. Now we have a “statement bank”. But for a procedure that seems surrounded by financial references, it seems that reporting process is now bankrupt of all real meaning.
added 19/6/05
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