Is Our Reporting System Broken?

Last term, I was charged with rejuvenating the formal written reports for primary at NBCS. It was supposed to be a four-week process – ha! Let’s just say that the ETA for this project’s completion is mid 2015. It’s massive.

I should also add that I don’t have a particular bent on reporting… I’m much more into authentic assessment. However, that begs a vital question – if we are assessing authentically, why are we reporting in-authentically? Many may say because it’s a “department” of “BOSTES” or “government” requirement but, I believe, those people aren’t interpreting the documents accurately.

Here’s the low-down according to BOSTES:

This information can and should be interpreted creatively.

One school completely blew my traditional ideas out of the water – Flinders Christian Community College in Victoria don’t have summative reports. What?!

At FCCC, all students upload their assignments to Moodle, these are marked online and viewable by parents. The end. This is authentic, formative reporting. Sure – FCCC have jazzed up the Moodle interface to show graphs and summative information, but teachers don’t write end-of-semester reports.

Thus, at any time, parents can click into Moodle and get information something like this:

This made me realise that, not only are end-of-semester reports “too little, too late” but, perhaps, they are actually completely redundant.

Next week, I’ll share some ideas about how NBCS might move forward with this information in mind.