Thu Dec 12

Don’t understand your child’s report? Ask their teacher these questions instead

Written by: Jonathan Heard, Research Fellow, Educational Monitoring and Research Division, Australian Council for Educational Research

As school wraps up, families around Australia will be receiving their children’s school reports for the second half of 2024.

This is the key way schools communicate with parents about how students are going. But parents can find them difficult to understand.

Why is this? And what are some questions you could ask your child’s teacher before the end of the year to understand how they are really going?

Why are reports important?

School reports are important because they help parents stay engaged ^[1] in their child’s schooling.

They help parents to set and maintain high expectations, talk to their child about school and support and encourage their learning. All of these strategies have been shown ^[2] to help students do better academically.

So the quality and accessibility of information in reports is very important for students’ education.

A group of young children in uniform sit on the floor.

School reports help parents stay engaged in their child’s schooling. Darren England/ AAP

School reports in Australia

In Australia, education experts have argued ^[3] school reports are difficult for parents to understand. In 2019 research^[4], colleagues and I also found parents are confused by grades and rating scales in reports that do not clearly explain the “standard” or reference that underpins them.

They can also find teacher comments in reports ^[5] vague and difficult to meaningfully interpret. Meanwhile, the use of grades in reports as the main indicator of a child’s performance can make it hard to tell if there has been any growth in learning ^[6].

So parents can be left with an inaccurate or unreliable account ^[7] of how their child is performing, and inadequate information with which to take action if their child is struggling.

We can do better

The Australian Council for Educational Research has designed a prototype “digital student report” to communicate students’ learning in more satisfying ways for parents (without adding to teacher’s workloads ^[8]).

It assumes a lot of content could be auto-populated from assessment data already collected and stored on a school’s learning management system. This would enable parents to access information at varying levels of detail (according to their need or interest) and monitor learning growth over time.

We have run focus-groups on the prototype with 47 parents, students, teachers and school leaders across three schools. The results of this small-scale research project will be published early next year.

How can you follow up with school?

In the meantime, if parents have read the explanatory detail in their child’s report and still have questions, they should feel confident to talk to their child’s teacher before the end of the year.

A sideview of students in uniform writing at desks.

Teachers can help explain what key terms and results in reports mean. Juice Verve/ Shutterstock ^[9]

Here are some questions you could ask, based on what kind of report you school might use.

If grades are used

how are grades arrived at? Are they an average of performance across a set of tasks? If so, which tasks are used in this calculation, and how were they weighted?
are grades based on how well children meet curriculum outcomes (these are also called “criterion-referenced”) or how they compare to their peers (“norm-referenced”)
should grades be interpreted as indicating whether your child is working at, above or below the curriculum-expected standard? In most states, grades reflect overall performance on learning tasks aligned with the curriculum standard for the child’s age group. This assumes – perhaps incorrectly ^[10] – all children are working at the year-level standard to varying levels of proficiency, represented by letter grades A to E.

If performance labels are used

ask what constitutes “developing” or “above expectations” or “satisfactory” or whichever terms are used, (if the school has not defined these terms already in the report)
can worded performance descriptors be “translated back” into the A to E scale, and if not, why not? While legislation requires ^[11] schools use a five-point scale such as the A to E scale “or equivalent” to report student achievement up to Year 10, not all performance labels used in reports are intended to meet this purpose.

If descriptive comments are used

what does it mean if your child “has” done this or “can” demonstrate that – does this mean they are operating at, above or below the curriculum-expected level?
how well have they done these things? What haven’t they demonstrated, and is this because they were unable to, or was it because those skills and knowledge were not assessed during the reporting period?
do the comments that indicate areas for improvement constitute general advice, or are they specifically targeted to reflect your child’s next steps for learning?

Ask about progress

Regardless of how well your child is performing, ask the teacher if – in their view – your child is making an expected or acceptable level of progress, and what evidence tells them this.

Progress is different to performance – it indicates the growth your child is making in their learning over time, regardless of their starting point and regardless of their grades. It is the difference in knowledge, skill, sophistication or proficiency a child could previously demonstrate versus what they can demonstrate now.

While performance has traditionally been the focus ^[12] of student reports, it is important to understand if your child is making progress in their learning. This ensures they are developing in their skills and knowledge and being appropriately challenged to meet their potential.