School Report; Judgement Day Approaches

We are to be honoured with a school report which I am informed by printed message will be delivered into my hands (presumably they can't trust the inmates to deliver it) on the 20th December 2012 (just in time for Christmas, how lovely).    The teacher has calculated that she will have precisely 6 minutes for each parent, and if you have more than 6 minutes worth of things to say you should make a separate appointment.  I can only deduce that as I will not have had time to read the report, the 6 minutes will be spent by the teacher presenting me with her facts.

My interest in this piece of fire-fodder can be summed up in the French style as 0 out of 20, however, the teachers are in a frenzy of statistical collation and the pupils are preparing for Judgement Day.

R told me today that he managed a 7 out of 10 for one Geography test, but a 0 out of 10 for the other, which he puts down to 'bad organisation' on his part.  His overall mark for the Report is therefore 7 out of 20, which tells me precisely 0 out of 20 about my son's ability achievement or improvement in geography.

"Any teacher who gives a pupil 0 out of 10 without giving him a chance to re-do it gets 0 out of 10 from me"  I said hotly.  "If my pupil got 0 I would be questioning my ability to teach".

R tells me that the school report will divide pupils into categories.  Those with consistently low notes would seem to be unworthy of attention, those 10 - 12 shall be called WHITE, and those over 12 shall be called ENCOURAGEMENT.  He didn't have anything to say about the top scorers, presumably because he has no hope of being one of them.   I'm not sure he's totally understood.  I certainly haven't.

"What is WHITE a sort of blank neutral nothing of a white wall?  I said to R

"Yes".

And what of ENCOURAGEMENT, you are all encouraged I would hope?  In fact I would have thought those with low notes need the encouragement whilst those with high could be congratulated?

"Yes".

I have had to do some emotional processing following all of this and was unable to empty the dishwasher without the help of Amy Winehouse Back to Black turned up very loud.

At least it is midwinter, when I go to collect the offending article I can wear a hat and a scarf round my mouth to hide my hostility.  R says I should just say 'I agree not good' about any complaints and 'Jolly good' for anything satisfactory.  This could be the longest 6 minutes of my life.

FULL REPORT OUT ON 20TH DECEMBER 2012 watch this space