What do our school reports really say?

School reports are an enduring feature of the education landscape. They form part of our personal history, fondly retained by parents well beyond a child’s school leaving age. The Department for Education requires schools in England to report to parents annually (Department for Education, 2015). There is widespread variation in reporting practice, and many schools are doing more than is legally required of them (Power and Clark, 2000). While frequent, data-focused reports are commonly used, many schools continue to write comment-based reports as part of their reporting regime. As students move into secondary school, reports of their day-to-day learning can become less forthcoming from the students themselves and reports become one of very few channels of home–school communication. The language used in reports is important; parents commonly express frustration in popular media about mixed messages, errors and impersonal reports (Weale, 2015). At Bolton School, parents receive a c