School Reports

[SEM]

Just watching a great reminder of school reports on Beeb2. Just thought this would make a great thread of what people remember of them. If they did not lose them!!

I'll go for starters (my school was a Comprehensive) very very sporty!
Apart from Math, could do better! ( i hated math).. Love it now
English (not much interest) in other words it was a crap book. Jamaica Inn
History - should pay attention (spent most of my time watching the girls play tennis out the window)
Art - Excelled .... at least i could bloody draw, its my job now!
TD Technical Drawing - Excelled .... at least i could bloody draw, its my job now! Pt2
Biology- could do better (hated it as i HAD to take 2 sciences) Wanted to do woodwork
ET (Environmental technology, Geography) - Excelled.

come on then, what can you remember!!

 

[jimti]

for History--- this boy set a low standard and then failed to achieve it

I didn't like history in those days

 

[beezer60]

Math?

 

[SEM]

thought it was interesting that Private school sent their next years fees in with the reports as they are sent in the post to the parents..

 

[SportsCoupeRich]

i loved school report times! Then again I always seemed to get the 'very good, if only he didnt rush so much' line....thought it made me clever! oh how naive i was!

 

[DITTRICH]

4th Form Latin Report
"...has started talking in class - unfortunately not in my direction..."
(smug git - my latin teacher that is)
Les

 

[SEM]

Just thought id add this for interest.. the end is political but funny "The Times" by Ben Macintyre, January 15, 2005

WINSTON CHURCHILL’S school reports will soon go on display at a museum dedicated to his life. For those of us who still bitterly remember the sting of a bad report, they are as uplifting as any Churchillian oratory. “Weak”, was how his master at St George’s School described nine-year-old Churchill’s grasp of geography. His French was “not very good”, while his drawing was “very elementary”. The behaviour of the future prime minister was also a problem: “Troublesome . . . latterly has been very naughty.” This got worse over time, with another report lamenting that the young Winston “cannot be trusted to behave himself anywhere”, and that he was “so regular in his irregularity that I really don’t know what to do”.

The British school report — waspish, witty, frequently cruel and usually wrong — is an unjustly neglected literary genre, now sadly in decline. There was a time when extraordinary effort went into the writing of reports, as revealed in a recent collection entitled Could do Better, edited by Catherine Hurley (with profits to dyslexia research). Not only do these school reports provide a strange window into human development, they also reveal the pent-up frustrations of trying to teach recalcitrant little horrors, and the delight taken by some teachers in giving their pupils an end-of-term comeuppance.

*
Take this early assessment of Michael Heseltine: “He is rebellious, objectionable, idle, imbecilic, inefficient, antagonising, untidy, lunatic, albino, conceited, inflated, impertinent, underhand, lazy and smug.” I particularly like “albino”. The report writer has plainly lost it. Mere invective cannot adequately express the depth of his contempt for young Heseltine. He needs a word that is completely out of the ordinary; he reaches out and in desperation he clutches . . . “albino”.

There was a time when teachers treated the report as a form of literary caning, intended to inflict maximum salutary pain in the shortest space. Jilly Cooper’s parents were told: “She has set herself an extremely low standard, which she has failed to maintain.” The headmaster of Uppingham assessed Stephen Fry thus: “He has glaring faults, and they have certainly glared at us this term.” Fry’s English teacher was even more brusque: “English: bottom, rightly.”

One almost feels pity for the pompous headmasters repeatedly missing the point of their most celebrated pupils. Robert Graves, poet, essayist, biographer and novelist, was offered this adieu on leaving Charterhouse: “Well, goodbye Graves, and remember that your best friend is the wastepaper basket.” John Lennon’s teacher offered the gloomiest forecast: “Hopeless . . . certainly on the road to failure.” My favourite in the failed prediction category is Norman Wisdom’s report: “The boy is every inch the fool, but luckily for him he’s not very tall.”

Occasionally, the teachers caught a glimmer of what was coming. Mr and Mrs Paxman were told that Jeremy had potential, but was not a natural diplomat: “The stubbornness in his nature could be an asset when directed to sound ends. But his flying off the handle will only mar his efforts, and he must learn tact while not losing his outspokenness.” One of Michael Winner’s teachers noticed his tendency to tell stories at dinner: “There is a great demand to sit at his table.” Peter Ustinov’s master at Westminster was adamant: “He shows great originality, which must be curbed at all costs.”

It is impossible to imagine any teacher making so bold today, for school reports have become increasingly bland, winnowed of anything that might cause offence. Political correctness and the threat of litigation have forced teachers to tone down their criticisms, or put them in oblique code, while the insistence that all children are equally gifted and comparisons are odious has ensured that any teacher who says what he or she really thinks will be swiftly brought into line, and probably sacked. The future philosopher A. J. Ayer was described by Eton in 1923 as “a bumptious, aggressive, difficult boy, too pleased with his own cleverness”. Any parent receiving a report like that today would immediately reach for a lawyer.

Instead, modern teachers must use semantics, euphemism and circumlocution to get the message across. “Tarquin is very lively in class”. Translation: “The rowdy little bugger never shuts up.” “Ethelreda has potential.” Translation: “She’s bone idle, or else quite thick, I haven’t bothered to find out.” “Janet’s perseverance in the school production of Swan Lake did her credit.” Translation: “This girl is vast. She needs liposuction, not ballet.”

How much heartache might have been prevented if, say, Prince Harry’s teachers had told it straight? “History: Harry is not the brightest jewel in the crown; he has no grasp of history, and thinks that swastikas are funny.”

The defanged school report is only one aspect of a culture that shies away from direct criticism. As a society we would rather choke down a bottle of corked wine than send it back. Even literary and theatre criticism, once bastions of ferocious judgment, now tend more towards sniping than evisceration. Politics is just as vituperative as it ever was, but indirectly, the venom delivered behind closed doors and sotto voce.

Does anyone really believe that Gordon Brown squared up to Tony Blair and fired from the lip? “There is nothing that you could ever say to me now that I could ever believe.” He might wish to have said that; he might even believe he said that; he certainly thinks that. But politicians do not speak this way to each other, and more’s the pity.

It is time to bring back the barbed and unequivocal report, the blast of honest criticism, at schools, and in Westminster:

“Dear Mr and Mrs Brown, Gordon is a clever boy but moody and difficult. This term has seen yet more undignified feuding with the head boy. If he spent less time brooding on perceived slights, and more time on the mathematics at which he excels, he would go far. He should play more team sports. He is often rather untidy.”

“Dear Mr and Mrs Blair, Tony has allowed himself to become distracted far too easily, and there is a danger of him throwing away the good progress he has made in earlier terms. He appears to have fallen out again with his former chum Gordon, and I have given instructions that they should no longer be allowed sit together, since their constant squabbling is seriously disrupting the rest of the class.”