How to read your child's school report

A guide for parents at British and international schools in Riyadh · 4-minute read

A school report is written to be fair to thirty children at once, so it's often careful and general. Here's how to get the useful information out of it.

Separate attainment from effort

Most reports give two kinds of grade. Attainment is where your child is against the expected standard for their year. Effort (or "attitude to learning") is how hard they work. A child with high effort and low attainment in one subject usually has a specific gap that hard work alone isn't fixing. That's the pattern most worth acting on.

Read the comments for verbs

"Is developing", "is beginning to" and "with support" usually mean not yet secure. "Confidently", "independently" and "consistently" mean secure. A comment like "needs to show her working" or "should check her answers" is often a polite way of saying marks are being lost on method, not understanding.

Five questions to ask the teacher

1. Where is my child against the expected standard in English, maths and science?
2. What is the one thing holding them back most in each?
3. Can I see the baseline or standardised test results (for example CAT4 or GL Progress Tests)?
4. What do you see in class that the numbers don't show?
5. What would you most like us to support at home, and how?

An email you can send

Then make one plan

Once you have the detail, pick the one or two things that matter most and work on those consistently. One focused plan that matches what school is doing beats three different workbooks.