School Reports: Understanding What They Tell You — and What They Don’t
Information for parents on end of year school reports 2025
School reports today look very different from the ones many of us grew up with. When I was at school, reports were often handwritten and included more detailed comments about how a child learned, where they struggled, and what specific gaps existed. They were not written from a strength-based approach, they were very much deficit-focused, often with a few nice comments added at the end. While I don’t agree with a deficit approach, I also don’t agree with a strength-only approach. And here’s why.
The Shift to Strength-Based Reporting
Most school reports today are written using a strength-based framework, which I absolutely support in principle. Children need encouragement, reassurance, and to feel capable as learners. However, when reports rely heavily on assessment scores often from online assessments, especially for older students’ parents are left at the mercy of what that assessment actually measures.
Unfortunately, school reports rarely explain:
- what skills were assessed?
- how those skills were assessed
- which skills mattered most in the final score?
Instead, parents are often told something like: Robbie is working at Writing Level 3P and is considered Proficient. Understanding what these terms mean is incredibly important.
Levels, Labels, Terms and Scores– Why Understanding them Matter.
Terms such as Basic, Proficient, or Advanced sound clear and reassuring, but they are very broad categories. Curriculum or school levels (for example, 3B, 3P, 3A) often span up to two years of learning. A child can sit anywhere within that band — at the very bottom, in the middle, or near the top — and still receive the same label.
The same issue applies to assessment results that use stanine scores or refer to the mean (average) score. A stanine groups students into wide bands of performance, meaning two children with quite different skill levels can appear “similar” on paper. A score described as around the mean simply means a child sits near the average of the comparison group of students in that school year in New Zealand. It does not show how they achieved that score, which skills are secure/mastered, or which gaps may still exist.
Two students can both be labelled Proficient or sit within the same stanine or average range yet have very different learning profiles:
• One may have strong foundations and automatic skills.
• Another may be compensating, guessing, or relying on strategies or technology to keep up.
The report rarely tells you which one your child is.
Many of these terms are changing alongside new assessments being introduced. This information relates to reports sent out last year. While some schools may already be using updated language, the same key question still applies: what do these labels, levels, and scores actually mean for your child’s learning?
What Reports Usually Don’t Tell You
Most school reports do not clearly show:
- Which specific skills were actually assessed?
- Which skills are secure/mastered, and which are still developing and need review?
- What sits underneath broad labels such as reading, spelling, grammar, vocabulary, sentence structure, reading, or handwriting?
These labels sound clear, but each one contains many different skills and is the details that we need for our children who struggle if we want to help and advocate for their needs.
Reading – Reading is often reduced to a single level or score, but reports rarely tell you:
Which parts of reading are strong or weak:
- Understands the letter to sound (grapheme to phoneme) correspondence.
- Decoding – sounding out words accurately and at what word level (cvc, cvcc etc).
- Where in the school scope and sequence the child is?
- Fluency – reading smoothly, accurately, tone and at an appropriate pace.
- Comprehension – understanding what is read and is passage nonfiction or fiction.
They also don’t usually explain whether a child is:
- guessing from context or pictures
- missing little words
- relying on memorisation
- struggling with unfamiliar or longer words (multisyllabic words)
- struggling with blending, 3,4 or 5 letter words
- in cognitive overload
Two children at the same school level in the same year can have very different reading profiles and need very different support.
Spelling – A report may say poor spelling or needs work with spelling, but it usually doesn’t explain:
- Which spelling patterns your child knows or should know
- Where in the school scope and sequence is the child?
Whether difficulties relate to:
- working memory issues
- phonics and sound–letter (phone to grapheme) knowledge
- syllable types
- prefixes, suffixes, and word endings (morphology)
- irregular or high-frequency words
- is in cognitive overload
Grammar – A comment about grammar rarely tells you the details you need to support your child, especially if your child also has a language delay, like DLD. I would also say ADHD can also affects this area in writing with less focus on details and reviewing writing.
- Which areas are affected, such as:
- correct use of nouns, verbs adjectives
- not using verb tense – this is a common one.
- subject–verb agreement.
- punctuation – and not just commas, and semi colon, often capital letters and full stops still need work for older students who struggle.
- clauses and phases
- correct word order
Sentence Structure – When reports mention sentence structure/building needs work they don’t usually clarify:
Whether sentences are:
- very short or repetitive
- missing key information
- poorly organised
- include appropriate phases or clauses.
Whether your child needs support with:
- expanding sentences
- combining ideas
- using certain conjunctions, clauses or phrases
- organising ideas logically or needs work with topic sentences, or paragraph writing.
- understanding writing types
- need support with the next level of grammar
Vocabulary – A note about vocabulary often doesn’t explain:
Whether your child struggles to/with:
- understand word meanings.
- choose age-appropriate words.
- recall vocabulary when writing.
- use the correct word or confused it with something similar
- Tier one, two or three words
Whether the difficulty is linked to:
- oral language development
- DLD Development Language Delay
- Limited or no exposure to the word
- broader language challenges
Handwriting
Handwriting is often briefly mentioned, or not mentioned at all, yet it can have a significant impact on learning for our kids.
Reports rarely explain whether handwriting difficulties relate to:
- letter formation
- spacing
- size and alignment
- writing speed or fatigue
They also don’t usually show whether challenges are linked to:
- fine motor control
- visual–motor integration
- lack of automaticity (how effortful writing is)
Handwriting is often described as messy or untidy, without recognising how much effort it takes or how it affects confidence, stamina, and written output.
Why Knowing What Is Assessed Really Matters – You Need this Information to Understand your Child’s Needs and to Advocate for them.
Unless you actually know what skills are being assessed, you don’t truly know what your child is Proficient or Advanced in or what average truly means and you can presume anything until you ask the right questions..
Why This Is Especially Important for Children with Dyslexia and Other Learning Challenges
Children with dyslexia or other learning challenges can often go under the radar for years. They may appear to be coping, working hard, and “doing okay”, until suddenly the wheels come off.
When this happens, it often shows up as:
- high anxiety
- self-hate/loathing
- behavioural changes
- emotional distress
- school refusal
- poor regulation
By this point, the learning difficulties have usually been present for a long time, masked by effort, intelligence, or compensatory strategies.
When reports are consistently positive and strength-based, parents are often given no clear warning signs. Without detailed, skill-level information, parents don’t have the key details needed to understand what is really going on or how to help.
The Problem with the words “At Level”, which change to “At Phase” this year.
For many parents, the phrase that causes the most confusion is “at level.”
What is rarely explained is that:
- curriculum levels often cover up to two years of learning.
- being “at level” can still mean a child is one to two years behind key expectations.
- two children can both be described as “at level” while having very different levels of skill security.
This was the word that tripped me up personally in the early schools’ years.
“At level” sounded reassuring. but in reality, it could still mean significant gaps existed. Without understanding how levels work and what is covered in these levels, parents can easily assume everything is fine when their child is actually just coping.
Last year this was a System, Reporting and Curriculum Issue — Not a Teacher Issue
It’s important to be really clear that this is not about blaming teachers. This is a system and reporting issue. Teachers are working within systems that are still changing. The curriculum has shifted to phases, assessments are changing, and structured literacy PLD is still ongoing for many teachers, particularly in Years 4 and above. Teachers are now using diagnostic assessing in the class as well as assessments like the phonics check some schools are using Dibels and spelling assessments that provide the extra details about decoding, spelling patterns/rules and morphology. My hope is this information will be reflected in new reports this year.
Many teachers are still learning the new curriculum and what a structured literacy approach is, while also using reporting templates and assessment tools based on the old curriculum levels. This can mean reports don’t always show the level of detail parents need to clearly understand strengths, gaps, and next steps.
My advice is to pull out your child’s end of year report and ask your self does it tell me, what skills my child is struggling with. If the answer is no, then you know have a starting place to start asking questions. You are your child’s best advocate, but you must start to learn and understand what support and scaffolds you need to advocate for.
Created by Sharon Scurr on the 17 January 2025