Just been going through some documents at my parents and found one of mine. Ruddy ‘ell they’d got me 100% sussed 40+ years ago! 🤣
No wonder I came out with two CSEs!
Not sure if my parents still have it but I had an RE report that said "Stephen has no moral conscience but argues his point cogently".
Parents were horrified, one of my proudest moments.
At parents evening my mam and dad misheard boffin for buffoon, from my science teacher and i loved science.
Most of mine were fine, no issues with anything except I was pretty terrible at languages.
In the first year of A-level, we had to do a "GCSE in a year" thing (CSE?) alongside it and I chose Spanish as the least worst option out of the subjects available to us. Quite why I chose this, after getting the lowest mark in the entire school for French several years previously was a mystery to me but I was shockingly bad at it. My Spanish aural exam was 25% stunned silence, 25% in English and the remaining 50% in a mix of Spanish, German, French and Latin. I just lost it completely in that exam.
The report afterwards was not encouraging. I got a U.
Ruddy ‘ell they’d got me 100% sussed 40+ years ago!
Didn't keep any reports but the most often used phrase was "could try harder". I dismissed that as a lazy comment but now at 57 years old I would agree they were dead right from school and all through working life.
I think I just try hard at the stuff I enjoy (i.e. cycling) and don't really bother with anything else (i.e. education and work)!
Anagallis has a real spelling problem, he has the ability to overcome it if only he could be bothered
Anagallis has an overly aggressive attitude which spoils his ability to play sport.
Has tremendous potential in this subject (biology) but is basically lazy
Late 70s, Art Master: 'Bakey is conscientious and tries hard, but displays no conspicuous ability'.
Lovely.
'a bit of a dark horse' seemed to appear quite frequently in mine.
Is that teacher code for 'turns out he's not as thick as we thought'?
Late 70s, Art Master: 'Bakey is conscientious and tries hard, but displays no conspicuous ability'.
Lovely.
Oh actually - art. Our school reports were a letter (A-E) for attainment and a number (1-5) for application. I got a C1 in art. Basically I apply myself to it very well but only ever produce average results.
It was entirely accurate to be fair.
Muff's report could have been written for both me and my son.
"Could try harder" made many appearances too...
"Could try harder"
"Could do better"
"Easily distracted"
"Distracts others"
"If applied himself could do well"
Well yes, but it was all boring as shit to me so I wasn't interested and didn't...
No reports but I remember my mandatory chat with the careers guy at sixth form (who'd never taught me):
"Looks like you're going to get god A levels" (sciences). "I'd normally be talking about medicine but thats 5 years of hard work and I think we both know that's not for you"
Earlier on, our art teacher conspicuously did not recommend that I did it for O level. None of my mates got the same
I read these things and just think thats basically an admission.
"I have failed to inspire this child"
Mine were basically 'if he put as much effort into schoolwork as he does to talking to his friends in class, he could do very well' – set on repeat for every subject* for every year.
*Apart from art. I enjoyed art and did moderately okay in it despite doing barely any set coursework and just creating stuff I enjoyed doing.
I don’t have any of mine, my parents may. However, they’ll be mostly “must try harder” and some very belittling feedback from what I recall. Dyslexia wasn’t very well supported.
I read these things and just think thats basically an admission.
"I have failed to inspire this child"
I think theres a bit of a Yeats 'words at once not untrue and not unkind' thing going on.
Its actually quite a tall order to succinctly describe some objectively and uniquely in a paragraph, particularly to describe someone's limitations.
I remember being commissioned, alongside my partner to work of an arts project in a school. The pretence for the project was something tragic had happened (we were never told what, or to who) and the project we were running revolved around emotional strength, both personally but also being of strength to other. It was all very deep and interesting but had to be navigated lightly, as they were pretty young kids. Anyway - what I was struck by was how exhuastingly short and compressed a school day is for teachers. I'm used to working 11 hour days, usually with another 2-3 hours of travel on top and I found the shortness of a school day brutal and completely without punctuation. School days are shorter than when I was a kid but what has been cut is all the spaces between things which means theres no reflection time for teachers. My enduring memory is teachers after lunch with one foot in their class room, one foot in the corridor, trying to finish their food and finish discussion that had started in the staff room during the not-hour-long lunch hour.
I was around school report time and what was really interesting was we could tell the teachers what each of the kids in their class was like in a sentence in a way that they were really struggling to articulate on a report form.
But I appreciate that it's not an easy thing to do. For a while I used to run art galleries and the thing I found most creatively taxing and tiring and which ultimately meant I left the sector writing rejections to artists. There was probably on average a 50:1 applicant to success rate so a surprising amount of your time and thought went into kindly, but specifically and helpfully telling people, basically, that they weren't good enough and doing that ruined the job for me and I just decide to leave the industry and do something else.
"Could achieve more if only he applied himself"
Was a standard report and conversation point throughout my school years.
I found school dull, combined with parents who didn't really care and/or encourage me to apply myself so I left with very little.
Thankfully I found my groove with an interesting career and got a good academic foundation many years later.
I don't know if I any of my actual reports have survived to this day but I do remember a theme of "bright, but easily distracted" coming through in a lot of them.
I read these things and just think thats basically an admission.
"I have failed to inspire this child"
I think theres a bit of a Yeats 'words at once not untrue and not unkind' thing going on.
Its actually quite a tall order to succinctly describe some objectively and uniquely in a paragraph, particularly to describe someone's limitations.
I remember being commissioned, alongside my partner to work of an arts project in a school. The pretence for the project was something tragic had happened (we were never told what, or to who) and the project we were running revolved around emotional strength, both personally but also being of strength to other. It was all very deep and interesting but had to be navigated lightly, as they were pretty young kids. Anyway - what I was struck by was how exhuastingly short and compressed a school day is for teachers. I'm used to working 11 hour days, usually with another 2-3 hours of travel on top and I found the shortness of a school day brutal and completely without punctuation. School days are shorter than when I was a kid but what has been cut is all the spaces between things which means theres no reflection time for teachers. My enduring memory is teachers after lunch with one foot in their class room, one foot in the corridor, trying to finish their food and finish discussion that had started in the staff room during the not-hour-long lunch hour.
I was around school report time and what was really interesting was we could tell the teachers what each of the kids in their class was like in a sentence in a way that they were really struggling to articulate on a report form.
But I appreciate that it's not an easy thing to do. For a while I used to run art galleries and the thing I found most creatively taxing and tiring and which ultimately meant I left the sector writing rejections to artists. There was probably on average a 50:1 applicant to success rate so a surprising amount of your time and thought went into kindly, but specifically and helpfully telling people, basically, that they weren't good enough and doing that ruined the job for me and I just decide to leave the industry and do something else.
Thats Larkin not yeats. See me after class boy.
I do understand what you are saying but that report in the OP is just unconstructive. You do not understand kids if the only thing you can come up with "he'll regret that in a year". No shit, sherlock.
Thats Larkin not yeats. See me after class boy.
FFS - why did I think it was Yeats? Oddly - I don't really know the work of either, what I'm thinking of is someone quoting it, which I'm either mis-remembering or they were getting it wrong too.
My parents told me that at my first parents evening the headmaster said, "We always know where he is at playtime because he can be heard across the entire school. What do you feed him?"
I think it was my Dad's proudest moment.
Can't be arsed to go through the papers so "**** would benefit from spending more time doing geology and less riding his bike". Still got an A, a good degree and a good job so I reckon the bike:geology ratio was perfect.
Not in a report but in the end of year meeting with parents "why do you want to do French not chemistry, you're good at science and you'll need chemistry?". The chemistry I needed I learned later but the French set me on course for spending most of my life in France.
Our school reports were a letter (A-E) for attainment and a number (1-5) for application.
Think ours was Attainment and Effort ?
Mine must have varied between A+ and A- (Maths, Physics and anything technical) for attainment. But C- at best for effort.
English, French, German, and Humanities probably D- all round for both achievement and effort. RE and Art were probably E- because the scale doesn't go any lower.
Can't complain at my career, so can't have been all bad.
The chemistry I needed I learned later but the French set me on course for spending most of my life in France.
If I'd have tried to go to France after my 30% or so score in end of year exams aged about 13, I'd have spent the entire time saying:
"Je ne comprends pas" and
"parlez-vous anglais?"
That said, I've been cycling in Spain a fair bit and - in spite of my total failure in Spanish aged 16/17 - I can actually get by with the basics. I think language in schools needs to start far earlier and to be embedded in the school culture. One lesson a week learning to ask "where is the station?" is pointless.
Half of this lot sound like Barnum Statements (I wonder if half of them were?). "Could try harder" is surely true of pretty much all children, I bet no-one ever got "tries too hard" on their reports.
The only high school report I remember was from my English teacher who wrote "his handwriting looks like a spider crawled through an inkwell, had an epileptic fit and then died" (like she had room to talk anyway). With the benefit of hindsight, welcome to being left-handed love.
Think ours was Attainment and Effort ?
Achievement and Effort for us IIRC. Religious Indoctrination aside I typically scored high in one and low in the other. German, I tried really hard, just didn't get it, there wasn't room in my brain for a third language after two years of French. Maths I had an affinity for (certainly at high school level at least), so I'm getting A's for Achievement but being penalised for not trying harder. What do you want from me here, to pretend that I'm finding it more difficult?
Purely out of curiosity, last year I went to my old high school's Open Day ahead of the new school year. It was fascinating to see how much had radically changed and how much was exactly the same. They'd got their money's worth out of the benches in the gym, they were the same ones we were using 40 years ago.
One report sticks in my head
'JP is an intelligent layman but by no stretch of the imagination is he a biologist'
I was happy with that
My favourite...
"This exam result was entirely predictable and only reflects TiRed's immature attitude towards his work throughout the year. He is beginning to find that natural intelligence is not sufficient unless it is backed up by application. The pity is that he doesn't seem to care"
and...
"TiRed treats this subject very lightly and consequently derives little benefit"
Things got a lot better once I'd left those O'Levels behind and started working on subjects I was interested in. Let's just say that the kids were shocked when I allowed them to read my school reports 🤣
Needed 160 UCAS points to get onto my Engineering course. Relatively low, because at the time the admissions seemed to be based on popularity of the course, nothing to do with how hard the course is.
Would you believe it, I got 160 UCAS points.
Tutors "Thats very lucky"
Me "Its not luck. Any more would have been wasted effort"
Basically sums up education for me.
Engineer logic right there. "Is the glass half full or half empty?" Neither, it's twice as big as it needs to be.
😁
"Phil_H appears to be wasting his sixth year"
Fair enough, really.
I like the comment on my FIL’s report from many years ago: “Have we met?”
"A budding Isaac Walton" from the English teacher.
I was mad keen on fishing and worked it into any written exercise I could.
The French teacher who did my oral exam knew I was into cycling and read French cycling magazines, you can guess the way the questioning went.
"Looks like you're going to get god A levels" (sciences).
Strange turn of phrase. I thought that sciences were not entirely compatible with religion.
I was mad keen on fishing
Username checks out.
Nice that muffin-man.
Are you seated at the table in the utility muffin research kitchen?
I don’t have report copies, sadly, but I did have an impressive ”apathetic from the outset” at one stage. Accurate too
I think of that statement as an ode to the almost universal lack of motivation to inspire amongst our teachers.
“You’ll do it because I say so” never worked on me.
Ah well, to be fair I did have a rebellious dad and it was the 60’s.
I had some extracurricular piano lessons at one stage - until the poor piano teacher couldn’t stand it any longer and told my parents they were wasting their money.
Ah those heady days of long Summers and unfortunately boring teachers.
No idea where my school reports are and I doubt they were kept or if I even received any, I went to 5 primary schools and 4/5 high schools/academy’s and can’t remember any from high school.
They’d be utter shite anyway as I ****ing detested school, waste of time for myself except I quite liked Oban high school as I remember enjoying my 2 years there in mid/late 80’s
I failed my cycling proficiency at primary school even though I was dirt tracking and wheeling 'droppies' and then at high school Mr Lord would let pupils in his group ride bikes for an hour (he commuted by bike), my group had the spiteful Mr Jones who made me endure team sports unlike my BMXing friends. I refused to do any sports activities and did litter picking for 2 years. I got an F for PE!
I failed my cycling proficiency at primary school even though I was dirt tracking and wheeling 'droppies' and then at high school Mr Lord would let pupils in his group ride bikes for an hour if they wanted (he was an avid cyclist), my group had the spiteful Mr Jones who made me endure team sports unlike my BMXing friends. I refused to do any sports activities and did litter picking for 2 years. I got an F for PE!
Could try harder" is surely true of pretty much all children, I bet no-one ever got "tries too hard" on their reports.
To be fair I have on a few occasions been known to say this at parents evenings, some kids literally do try too hard. You don't need all 9's at GCSE
Don't have any reports, but I do have these, as early promise of my athletic prowess
I was basically a straight A student, but questioned authority would only comply if there was a reasoned argument for me to do so. Luckily the head liked me and few other strange but brainy nerds and encouraged some independent characters.
PE teacher always gave me a rubbish report as I was a little chubster and hated football and cricket, until we got to rugby and then I got banned for being too punchy/aggressive as it was a great opportunity to maul some of my old bullies without getting suspended.
Even in the 6th form our school wouldn't let Peter Keen do cycle training on a Wednesday sports afternoon, despite him being British junior time trial champ & going on to train Chris Boardman later in life.
I’ve no idea if there are any school reports about me in existence, my folks never mentioned any, and my mum never mentioned anything later on. I was OK at art, English and technical drawing, I enjoyed physics, but barely scraped through CSE maths, but after leaving school, art, English and technical drawing saw me through pretty much my entire working life, in print, publishing, and even the last year I worked, applying the livery graphics to two national motoring school vehicles, as having a very good eye for alignment and spacing was invaluable.
“ .. is by no means a model pupil.”
That report did not go down so well when it reached home 😖
Got nicknamed the "school lunatic" by one art teacher and called a "stupid pratt" by another, but by & by my reports & results were pretty good 🙂
