Say the words “school report” and most of us will still get an immediate dull ache in our stomachs.
The nerves. The fear. The anxiety.
What did Mrs Bowles say about that horrible exam? Did Mr Halse mention how often you talked in class even though you were definitely talking about the homework? Will your parents be pleased, angry or worst of all ‘disappointed’?
Oh, how things have changed for primary school kids now.
“There’s no more ‘Could try harder’, ‘Must try harder’, ‘Talks too much’, things they used to say. These days they’re either rated things, A B C D or whatever, or you get a little mark,” host Holly Wainwright reminisced on this week’s episode of This Glorious Mess.
“The language is really vague and very PC and they just rate one of them rather than actually write a comment about your child.”
This Glorious Mess deciphers all those report card comments.
Instead, you’re more likely to see dots indicating how well your child has done.
“What you’re really looking at is making sure the dots are more to the right hand side of the page than the left hand side. That’s all it is. Because the words mean nothing. They literally mean nothing,” said Andrew Daddo.
So what do those vague comments the teacher does write actually mean? We had a go at decoding.
1. ‘Satisfactory effort’.
Translation? Just enough.
“It means has done the absolute minimum. They’ve done the minimum of effort,” says Daddo.
Top Comments
So much of how we write reports and what grades and rankings appear in the reports is dictated by the Department. Being a high school teacher I generally write over 150 reports twice a year. My record is 270 due to teaching split classes. I go to great effort to state how the student is going, what they are doing well with and what they could improve on.
If you're unhappy with your child's report, just give the school a ring; I'm sure the teacher would greatly appreciate parent interest.
Nothing says "this report is total BS" like having another kid's name all through it, as one of my high school reports did. What a waste of time.