Most of the schools I’ve taught in have operated some sort of ‘on report’ system for poorly behaved students. The idea is said poor behaved student presents his or her report card to teachers at the beginning of each lesson and the teacher records how satisfied they are with the behaviour exhibited in the lesson. Usually, the teacher will have to score the students behaviour, punctuality and sundry other qualities out of 5, maybe add a brief comment and then sign or initial to make the whole thing official. The student then takes the completed report to a senior teacher at the end of the day – and sometimes at the beginning of break and lunch. This senior member of staff will then review the student’s behaviour and determine whether it warrants some sort of consequence – normally a detention. If, after a week, or thereabouts, of unblemished daily reports, the student is deemed to have redeemed themselves and no longer needs to be on report.
It’s not a bad idea. It’s meant to make students more accountable for their behaviour and sometimes it even works. Usually though, in my experience, behaviour report cards are undermined by low expectations and undue lenience. What often goes wrong is this: the student on report presents their card to the teacher (or not – sometimes they don’t bother) and then proceeds to behave exactly as they please. The naive teacher comforts themselves with the thought that the report card means the miscreant won’t be allowed to get away with such a cavalier attitude but then, at the end of the lesson, the student comes to collect their report only to express outrage that their appalling behaviour has been recorded as such. At best this results in a sullen, grudging acceptance but more often will provoke some sort of protracted dispute with the student attempting to persuade the teacher to improve the score on the grounds that, “I was better than usual though, wasn’t I sir?” At worst it results in threats and intimidation with the offending student making clear what the teacher can expect in future lessons if the report card isn’t completed to their liking.
There are times I’ve buckled under pressure and times I’ve stubbornly held my ground and insisted that spitting/swearing/aggression/doing no work (delete or add as appropriate) is not acceptable. In some schools, and some classes (usually ‘bottom’ sets) there will be four or five reports to complete, and for or five attendant arguments, every lesson. This is stressful and exhausting, but should at least mean that the students’ behaviour will be appropriately sanction by whichever senior teacher put them on report in the first place.
Sadly, this is rarely the case. All too often the senior teacher lets the student off in exchange for an easy life, but even when the report card is taken seriously and the threatened sanction is issued, nothing changes. I’ve taught some students who seem to be permanently on report, others whose report card changes colour as the member of staff they report to becomes ever more senior but with little or no improvement in their behaviour. All the while, teachers, especially new and inexperienced teachers experience a regular and debilitating point of conflict.
In the worst schools, senior teachers analyse students’ behaviour reports to establish which teachers appear to managing behaviour well and in which lesson the students are most persistently misbehaving. Predictably the teachers who are least experienced but most insistent on high standards of behaviour are the ones who will run afoul of such analysis and be targeted for ‘support’. An unwary teacher can easily find themselves identified as the cause of students’ misbehaviour and having to show their lesson planning to senior staff to prove that they’re making sufficient attempts to be ‘engaging’. This adds considerably to workload and has no impact whatsoever on students’ behaviour. It’s no surprise then that a canny teacher may elect not to record misbehaviour for fear of being the target of SLT’s ire.
None of this is to say that report cards are never effective; they can be made to work well for some students in some contexts. But unless senior teachers understand that students’ behaviour is the primary responsibility of the school, not the teacher, report cards can backfire badly. Use with caution.
As an addendum, I’d like to point out that the worst kind of behaviour report is, of course, the class report. Sometimes the behaviour of a whole class is deemed to be bad enough that it is put ‘on report’ collectively. This is particularly nasty example of collective punishment and is therefore both lazy and immoral.
Report cards are indeed a potential source of inconsistency. Their applications require considerable scrutiny to ensure the outcomes fit the schools mission and ethos but, most importantly, support students to meet behaviour expectations speedily. They should never be used in isolation beyond one pre-defined cycle for wont of the risk of becoming a badge of honour.
Behaviour standards however are a collective responsibility which is why the best systems are characterised by all staff applying standards consistently. Passing the buck or blaming SLT weakens the system and the school. SLT or other identified skilled pastoral managers are there to ensure fairness, equity and balance and, most importantly, to apply a highly personalised approach which takes into account the child’s needs and the teachers.
Some salient points unfortunately muddied by what looks a little like a bit of a blame game?
I think you may have misunderstood:
“Passing the buck or blaming SLT weakens the system and the school. SLT or other identified skilled pastoral managers are there to ensure fairness, equity and balance and, most importantly, to apply a highly personalised approach which takes into account the child’s needs and the teachers.”
What happens when SLT blame teachers and pass the buck? And it’s happened a lot in my personal experience. Pretending otherwise is iniquitous.
I certainly don’t pretend it doesn’t happen David. My point is that best practice should support teachers and students. Of course, if that’s your experience, I understand your scepticism but that is not indicative of a poor mechanism (I.e. use of reports) but rather a poor SLT. Indeed, a “team” using systems to fuel teacher blaming is both delusional and sadly symptomatic of a downward spiral.
I make clear in the post that it can work (and what needs to happen to make it work) but it seems more pressing to clarify why it tends to be ineffective.
If you’ve developed a system which avoids all these pitfalls then do please feel free to ignore my criticisms. Maybe also you’d like to share the details?
It’s frustrating when students are beautifully behaved when on report, come off report and then revert back to being disruptive and difficult.
In my opinion reports are over used and then used for too long. I’m doing some work on getting it to work better as a short term measure with a clearer outcome. Your post highlights the problem with the way reports are sometimes used.
Thanks for this post – your description of how report cards can sometimes be used is spot on! I think the key to making reports work is that they need to be very specific for the pupils – not how ‘good’ they were but specific to the reason they were put on report – punctuality, remaining on task, completing work, speaking respectfully, etc. This means that there is no ambiguity about the score and so little room for argument.
Even when planned well, cards don’t work for every student, but even that tells us something useful – this isn’t working and we need to try something else.
You’re quite right about class reports. My 21 year-old daughter was reminiscing about school the other day and clearly still feels the injustice of the class report her tutor group were placed under in year 8 – the first thing she recalled upon mention of that teacher’s name. However, a class report that sets a positive challenge for a group of children to achieve – what an excellent strategy that can be!
To be effective, punishments should follow swiftly and surely after the transgression. Dragging them out for a week merely demonstrates that the management is supine, while at the same time increasing the offender’s sense of grievance and self-image as a rebel. No teacher should ever have to ‘manage’ the behaviour of their pupils. If there is no expectation that all pupils will behave, the outcome is all but a forgone conclusion.
By contrast, in a school where misbehaviour is not tolerated, sanctions are seldom required. Once you’ve established a positive climate in a school, even NQTs can survive and thrive without constant ‘support’. Unfortunately, such schools are a vanishing species. Why we assume that teachers should have to justify their behaviour to pupils passeth all understanding.
I decided to put two offenders on positive report. A blank space was a cause for conversation and reflection and sanction. This has had a really positive effect because these 2 have a written account of what went well each day. Just a thought.