This year we have redesigned our Junior and Senior College reports. Junior reports were released this week. Senior reports will be released on May 27.

This year we have been working on restructuring our written reports. In the past our teachers have written a summary report twice a year, and while these reports are able to provide a snapshot of student progress, they are quite a static record. The Ministry of Education’s principles of effective reporting require a shift to information sharing in ‘real time’, where the personalised feedback is written online and is accessible to parents over the course of the year, providing a dynamic and accurate picture of ongoing performance as well as providing next steps at the time when the relevant teaching and learning is happening, so that students are supported to move to the next stage in their learning. Our plan is to progressively move towards this model of reporting or information sharing, and we have worked on the first steps in this redevelopment this term.

In the past our focus of reports has been mostly on reporting about students’ abilities with subject content. Allocating numbers (using a scale) to student achievement can also be very subjective. However, in response to a large body of current research including the OECD’s 2017 project, “The Future of Education and Skills 2030”, the focus of our Year 9 and 10 reports in this reporting round is on the six transferable skills (communicating, contributing, collaborating, thinking, self-regulation and having a maker mindset). These skills sit at the heart of developing students’ abilities to be part of the complex and changing world we live in. The new style report is designed to give feedback on how students are showing evidence of these skills within each learning area and/or learning context, and how these skills are developing for each student over time.

A significant change has also occurred with our Year 11-13 reporting process. We are very keen to make these reports as dynamic as possible, so that teachers have the opportunity to provide feedback as the learning is happening, rather than after the teaching and learning is complete. This means that the feedback has not gone through a rigorous review process prior to being live through the parent portal. The objective here is to give the opportunity for that process of information sharing to be a two-way conversation. We encourage you to contact teachers to engage in this two-way conversation. Please let us know if you have any comments or queries about the changes to our reporting processes.

As a follow up to feedback reports, on May 28 (1-7pm) we will be holding an Academic Conferencing Day for all Year 11-13 students to meet with their tutor. Parents/caregivers/whānau are welcome to attend. Bookings will be made via www.schoolinterviews.co.nz with the booking code: pfarf . You will see a ‘make a booking’ tab at the top right of your screen, that will then prompt you to enter the above code. The purpose of the academic conferencing is for the tutor to provide an overview of academic achievement, set short term and long term learning and well-being goals and, where needed, create an action plan in response to workload.