Understanding Your Child's School Report

As we inch closer to the mid-year school holidays, we also get closer to half yearly school reports!

For some kids, reports are a big deal and can cause anxiety and for other kids, reports just roll off their backs. Similarly, while some parents wait with bated breath to see how their children are faring in the classroom, other parents may barely glance at the report when it comes home in the bag at the end of term.

In most schools in Australia, students receive report cards twice a year, usually at the end of each semester. Government schools across Australia currently use the A to E grade system, while independent schools generally also provide reports but may choose different formats.

Reports are designed to provide parents an indication of our child’s progress against the expected standards for each year level. They also often provide areas of improvement, a measure of students’ level of effort and behaviour in class, details about attendance and written comments.

For many of us, school reports bring back memories of striving for As or getting in trouble with our parents if, shock horror! we got a C grade. Even more serious repercussions were on the cards if there was a D or E on the report.

These memories may skew our understanding of what the grades mean today, in 2021 (hint – A’s are not the be all and end all anymore, and C’s are pretty standard).

So, here is the official education department listing for each grade:

NSW / VIC / QLD:
A - a child is well above the expected standard
B - a child is above the expected standard
C - a child is at the expected standard
D - a child is below the expected standard
E - a child is well below the expected standard

SA / WA:
A - excellent achievement of what is expected
B - good/high achievement
C - satisfactory achievement
D - partial/limited achievement
E - minimal/very low achievement

TAS:
A - well above the standard expected
B - above the standard expected
C - at the standard expected
D - approaching the standard expected
E - below the standard expected

As you will see, C is the standard grade with it marking students whose learning (and application of that learning) is at the expected standard aka satisfactory.

 An A or a B indicates the child’s learning being above the expected standard, and a D or an E indicates that their learning is under the expected standard aka still developing in their learning.

Now, can we talk here about two VERY IMPORTANT parts to this.

1. Getting a D or an E is not a bad thing. It simply means that a child is yet to meet the expected standard for that particular subject at that particular point in time. And, as with everything with children (and adults!), we all learn in different ways, at different paces, needing different supports or different amounts of integration before we master something. This is all totally normal.
   
   And yes, we can use the D or E as an indicator to us as parents that perhaps we can implement some additional supports with that subject – perhaps we might sit with them when they are doing homework for that subject, or we can do some other activities at home to help strengthen their learning in that subject. Or, we might talk to the teacher about other strategies that can be implemented if needed.
2. Grades are not a grading of a child, they are an indicator of their learning at that particular time to a particular standard. If your child receives a D grade or an E grade (or an A or a B or a C), it doesn’t reflect on them as a person, rather it is telling us where they are at with their learning on that particularly subject. Period.

We need to do away with terminology like “Sarah is an A Grade Student!” No, let’s say instead something like - "Sarah has been getting A grades at school recently and we are really proud of her effort and achievement". Or "Kia needs a little bit more support with Maths", rather than "Kia got a D for Maths this term".

So, as parents, let’s use report cards as the tools that they are – an indication of how our child is handling the learning in the classroom – and let’s not make them mean anything more than that.

*Note - grading systems can vary between states and in public and independent schools.