Information to Parents from school

Every week our school send home an email to parents about there childs performance during that week. The week for us runs Thursday to Thursday. We are required to submit a rating of 1-5. On Friday through the Student Management System an average is created and emailed out.

Weekly notes has been somewhat of a tradition at our school. It is a great form of communication to parents that do not have to wait for a progress report or Parent Teacher Interviews before finding out that their child has not been preforming to their best in class.

I have seen what is sent out to parents a while ago and thought nothing of it. Now, its another story. There have been a few other schools that have picked up the weekly notes, or as they call it the Fortnightly Progress Report. It is laid up professional, has the information required on it and is received as a PDF. It has an explanation of the weekly notes, the teachers name and its purpose.

Ours has the Name, classes and code of the teacher, the average, however it has this statement at the bottom;

All marks are between 1 and 5 with 1 being poor and 5 being excellent.

Thats it!? That is all the explanation we are giving. What does a 2, 3, or 4 mean. What is poor?

In the other school this is the explanation that is with the weekly notes;

The Fortnightly Progress Grade assesses a student’s application and effort in the core subjects listed below. It may not accurately reflect their academic progress in each subject.
Year 9 & 10 students will receive a grade from 5 (excellent ) to 1 (unsatisfactory) for the current fortnight.
What we see in a student who gains a 5: Stands out in their effort and application
What we see in a student who gains a 4: Consistently applies themselves and makes a good effort
What we see in a student who gains a 3: Fulfils the basic requirements of learning and behaviour
What we see in a student who gains a 2: Reluctant to make the effort required in class
What we see in a student who gains a 1: No inclination to be involved in learning

I think that we need to look at the information and how it is being presented to parents. We are sending a .rtf document to parents everyweek that is merged from the Student Management System and emailed out. As I have been told the system that we are using was originally written for our school to do this, they were once handwritten.