Reporting to Parents in Primary School: Communication, Meaning ...

Reporting to Parents in Primary School: Communication, Meaning and Learning
evidence generally suggests that teachers operate this forum as
one in which they are in telling and explanation mode and
parents are listening. The short time frame for these meetings
would seem to focus minds on progress from the teacher’s
perspective. The impression our evidence gives is that other
more informal occasions are assumed to cater for issues that do
not pertain directly to children’s progress.
11. Teachers report that they find the parent-teacher meeting
more significant than the school report in terms of enabling
parents understand and support their children’s progress. They
report that parents share written and verbal reports with their
children and that parents discuss their children’s school reports
among themselves.
12. Teachers and principals perceive that parents are the main
audience for the school report and, while reports are kept in
school and are accessible to teachers, they do not typically
consult them when they get new children/class.
13. For schools a major challenge to effective reporting practice is
perceived to be linguistic diversity or more specifically the fact
that increasing numbers of parents and children do not have
adequate English to participate fully in the reporting
procedures. This is confirmed by the questionnaire data where
principals reported that parents who do not speak English or
who may have difficultly communicating in English represent
‘a significant communication challenge’. While schools in our
case study sample vary in the scale of this challenge and in
how they are addressing it, a common response is the use of
community members as translators.
14. Our evidence points to more variation among parents than
among teachers/schools in how they interpret their
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