Head of Middle School

Continuous Reporting

March Out once again was a wonderful illustration of the culture and values inherent in a Scotch College education. My advice to parents is to attend one March Out before it is your son's turn, not just so you know what expect on that day, but to see and hear in a single snapshot the symbols and messages of what we as a College see as important.

Over the weekend we had our new 2021 boarders and parents on site. It was a busy and engaging few sessions with both groups. One of the questions I was asked that I felt was worth repeating was: "How will we know how our son is going with his assessments?"

At Scotch College we have a process titled Continuous Reporting, essentially the sharing of information to improve student outcomes. We use a platform called SEQTA Engage for our parents to access this information. The Continuous Reporting process has two central elements:

• Feedback: following each summative assessment; the target audience is the student.
• Reporting: semester-based, twice per year; the target audience is the parent.

Whilst each aspect has a target audience, we anticipate both forms of information are read by both parents and students.

The purpose of feedback is to provide, within the most useful timeframe possible, advice, instruction and encouragement to enhance learning. In Middle School following all summative assessments (the more formal, structured and normed type assessments) we use the following structure to frame our feedback comments:

• What was done well?
• Where improvement was seen?
• Suggestions for future improvement

These comments along with a Criterion Level of 1–8 are recorded and made available within 10 school days of each summative assessment on SEQTA. Parents are notified of this SEQTA posting via an email.

Further to the affirmation and direction within the feedback, staff teach students how to reflect on their recent efforts and provide them with classroom time and a framework, along with prompts and sentence starters, to self-reflect on their unit of work and the concluding assessment. It is a valuable skill that is refined as students move through the years and can become a very powerful self-directing process in upper school and beyond.

The point I hoped I made to the boarding families when they asked me this question was to highlight that feedback, whilst accessible to both student and parents, is more effective as a conversation directly with the student. The final point I made was a parent can contact a teacher at any time throughout the year to ask for information on their son's academic and pastoral progress.