Reporting

Reporting is communicating to others the knowledge gained about student learning after reviewing and reflecting upon the information recorded during the assessment task. The reporting of learning progress must be consistent with assessment methods. SchoolMate.NET reporting is an ongoing process, both planned and informal, with reports available in oral, graphical and text formats according to the needs of the audience.

The purposes of reporting are to:

• support teaching and learning by providing information to students, parents, caregivers and teachers about students' learning progress and achievement. Continual feedback to the student provides the knowledge they require to improve their learning potential;

• provide student and school-based data for systemic accountability and reporting;

• provide data and information that can be used to create knowledge for future school and student- based programs.
  

Accurate and useful reporting of assessment results enables teachers, students, parents and the community to understand why various assessment instruments are being applied and how the results will be used as part of the school improvement process. In order to meet this goal, SchoolMate.NET schools involved in reporting assessment results should:

• determine the specific goals of the reporting activities at the outset of the process;

• select reporting strategies that are consistent with these goals and that effectively relay the desired information;

• report results at a level of understanding appropriate for the group or individual receiving the report.
  

SchoolMate.NET's report generator enables both the classroom teacher and the administrator to become 'knowledge managers', providing new tools to identify, measure and report performance, to revise practice and to enhance the quality of policy and practice. SchoolMate.NET provides a number of opportunities for student and cohort data analysis by student, scholastic year, length of time at school, ethnicity, gender, growth over time, and other important tags that are significant to a particular school.

Teachers and administrators are able to:

• generate individual qualitative and quantitative student reports in terms of curriculum achievement against school and state standards for a given length of time;

• determine the percentage of curriculum achieved by student or whole class. This report enables determination of individuals and cohorts at risk;

• analyse student, class and scholastic year data against other scholastic years and against state standards. These achievements can be compared within a given year or across chronological years. Analysis can also be broken down by particular school focus tags. These reports enable interrogation of growth over time for individual students, scholastic years and at whole school level;

• review non-cognitive data at individual student, class or scholastic year by gender, ethnicity, time spent at a particular school and specific school tags. Learning are able to review these data at any time, and as a consequence can modify existing school structures and design support programs to align need with effective support;

• review both learning and social data in terms of curriculum, school and state-based tests, behaviour and learning needs to determine student, grade and whole school performance. This report enables the gathering of qualitative and quantitative information from all areas of SchoolMate.NET on individual students and specific cohorts, and enables efficient resourcing structures to assure effective program development. This report can assist the restructuring of the school according to resourcing issues and immediate priorities.
  

Parents and students can regularly access quality information regarding their student's education through a variety of reporting mechanisms. These reports provide very honest detail and clear information regarding their student's learning and behaviour. The SchoolMate.NET student report known as a Record of Achievement is the centrepiece of shared discourse between home and school, and enables the parent, student and teacher to discuss:

• how the student is performing in each curriculum area. Parents now have the language of the learning of their student and are able to ask accurate questions about learning performance. The dark grey indicates what the student has achieved and the light grey indicates what the student is currently working on;

• demonstrated application within a strand of the curriculum area;

• how this performance compares to state standards;

• what they have achieved and not achieved;

• the activities the student is choosing to participate in at school;

• the students preferred approach to learning;

• the judgments a student has made about their own learning potential.
  

The continuous collection of worksamples that sit in SchoolMate.NET portfolios, and data gathered are valued by the student, teacher and parent and are viewed collaboratively in three way conferences. Informal and continuing reporting to parents through interviews, diary comments and telephone conversations encourages and assists the development of formative relationships between home and school, and can be recorded in SchoolMate.NET.

In all types of reports, the information should include how well an individual student did on the assessment, and what steps SchoolMate.NET teachers will take to make improvements in instruction so that the student will learn what is needed. Written reports also should include information concerning how parents can actively participate in a plan of action to address the instructional needs of their student.

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