Following complaints from some parents, the Australian government has insisted that schools throughout Australia now provide 'plain English' reports that parents can understand. But aspects of the government's proposals, particularly the proposal to report each child's performance against others in their class, have failed to win widespread support among schools.

What should parents expect of the reports schools provide? If the report your child brings home is difficult to understand, or if it is like the report you yourself took home from school, then it almost certainly falls short of today's best practice. Below we identify six features of highly informative school reports.

1.   Is your child's report easy to understand?

A report is a piece of communication-like a letter-and you should expect to understand it as well as you can understand most letters. Teachers, like other professionals, have a specialised language for communicating among themselves about what children are learning and about the difficulties children are experiencing. But, as a parent, you should expect a plain language explanation. You also should expect to understand any graphs included in your child's report.

2.   Does the report show what your child is now able to do?

A fundamental purpose of a report should be to summarise where your child is up to in his or her learning. What skills and understandings do they now demonstrate? Knowing that a child learned 60% of what a teacher taught is not good enough. As a parent, you have a right to objective information about what the teacher taught and about your child's current levels of knowledge and skill. In the past, this information often was hidden behind vague written comments and scores and grades that were difficult to interpret. It sometimes took parents years to discover the truth about what their children were unable to do. Many schools now make an effort to show parents what their children are able to do-in a written report, by assembling examples of a child's work for discussion at a parent-teacher interview, or by placing samples of the child's work on a confidential web page.

3.   Does the report show what is expected of students in this year level?

A useful report will indicate the achievements expected of students in your child's year level. There are two ways of doing this. The first is to identify the standard of performance expected: for example, what level of reading ability is expected of children by the end of Year 3? The report then indicates how your child is performing in relation to this expectation (eg, well below, below, at, above, well above). The second is to show how your child is progressing in relation to other children: for example, how does your child's performance in mathematics compare with the achievements of other children of his/her age? This information may be especially useful in key areas such as reading, social development and mathematics.

4.   Does the report show your child's progress?

In any given year level, children are at very different stages in their learning. For example, by late primary school in reading and mathematics, the highest achieving 10% of children are about six years ahead of the lowest achieving 10%. The best school reports give an accurate picture of where each child is up to in his or her learning and allow parents to monitor a child's growth across the years of school. However, some reports do not show progress at all; they simply record how well a child has learned what has just been taught-often as a percentage or a grade. Under this approach, a child can be awarded a 'D' this year, a 'D' next year, and a 'D' the year after, giving no sense of the progress they are actually making. There is also a risk of children interpreting reports of this kind as a reflection on their learning ability ("I'm a D-student"). Watch for reports that provide judgements about your child, rather than judgements about their work and progress.

5.   Does the report tell you about more than school subjects?

Schools not only develop children's understandings of subject matter; they also develop personal skills such as planning, organising, working independently, dealing with frustration, and completing tasks with concentration. Schools teach children to respect the contributions of others, to learn from others, to cooperate in joint activities, and to live and work together, sometimes putting the needs of other children ahead of their own. As well as telling you about your child's achievements in their school subjects, school reports should provide information about how your child is progressing socially and emotionally.

6.   Does the report suggest how you can help?

Although some reports provide general information about what a child will learn next, or information about gaps in a child's learning, schools often leave it to parents to work out how they might assist. Many parents are now asking for more specific information. Exactly what might they do to help? And schools are responding. For example, if a child is having difficulty with number concepts, suggestions might be made for ways of using number concepts when shopping. If a child is having difficulty completing assignments on time, suggestions might be made for developing supervised work plans or timetables. It is likely that future school reports not only will show parents what a child is able to do and what progress they are making over time, but also will suggest ways in which they might support their child's further learning.

If the report your school provides has all six of these features, it definitely deserves an 'A'.

This article was originally published as an invited opinion piece in Education Age, The Age, 2 September 2005.

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