Do your Academic Reports make the grade?

Academic Reports are a key communication tool between your school and parents.

As such, they should be clear, well structured and in line with your school’s brand image.

Read on for tips on how to keep your Academic Reports looking fresh and practices that you can adopt throughout the year to improve your reporting cycle.

Make it visual

The logos, graphics and formatting of your Academic Reports are an excellent way of enhancing your school’s image. It is vital to ensure that your Academic Reports feel like a natural extension of your school’s branding.

Ask yourself these questions and see if your school’s reports tick all the boxes:

Are your Academic Reports so complicated they require instructions?
Are your logos, school colours and images up to date?
Is the text easy to read?
When was the last time you updated the appearance of your Academic Reports?

Keep it fresh

Sometimes, the old adage “If it’s not broken, don’t fix it” isn’t the best methodology. This is also true for Academic Reports.

With the advances in technology and the evolving nature of education in general, an Academic Report format that you have used for several years may not cut it anymore.

With this in mind, consider having a solution in place that allows you to make your own adjustments to your Academic Reports quickly and as needed, without requiring the assistance of costly developers or technicians.

Make it continuous

Feedback is one of the most powerful influences on student performance, so why wait until the end of the term or semester to give it?

Implementing a solution that allows you to deliver regular feedback through assessment is a great way to boost engagement with students. A solution that can simultaneously provide parents with access to this valuable information also opens another avenue of communication that could help keep them involved in their child’s day to day learning.

Also consider the information that can be accumulated from continuous assessment and the benefits that could be gained by linking it into your academic reporting processes.

By utilising cumulative assessment results, term or semester performance can be projected and result trends recognised before they turn into physical results sent home on an Academic Report.

Make it relevant

When parents finally do get their child’s Academic Reports, the information should be clear, concise, and most importantly… relevant. If there has been clear communication on performance throughout the term or semester, there should be no need for a long and overcomplicated Academic Report.

In fact, we are seeing a trend in schools who deliver this type of continuous feedback through assessment move to a more consolidated, single page report. This is because the Academic Report is essentially a summary of what parents have already been informed of throughout the semester.

The wealth of information provided to parents and the constant engagement in their child’s learning has actually replaced the need for an ‘interim’ or ‘progress’ style report!

Make it accessible

With the extensive technology that is available, it’s not fair to expect parents to wait weeks to receive their child’s Academic Report in the mail or, in some cases, find it in the bottom of a backpack a few weeks later.

Why not try a digital method of distribution such as email or a solution where parents can access the Academic Report on-demand themselves?

Having a ‘self-serve’ approach to accessing reports can help reduce requests from parents for re-prints, not to mention:

Saving time by not managing physical copies of Academic Reports
Saving money on postage fees, printing, and stationery
Saving the environment by reducing your paper usage

Online accessibility also allows parents to easily compare their child’s current performance with prior Academic Reports.