Our five-year-old daughter has just finished her first year at school. At the end of term, we were presented with her school report. It lay in a brown envelope and as my husband and I opened it, with a large drink in our hands, it brought back memories of opening our exam results.
I will spare you the contents. There is nothing worse than parents who bore you to tears with a blow by blow account of their childrens’ progress. I recently had to endure a friend telling me all about how his son was a natural sportsman – and all at the age of three years old. However, what impressed us about my daughter’s report was the length and detail of it. She attends our village school and based on my childhood we did not expect to receive more than a couple of brief sentences such as “she has settled in well” or “she had made good progress in her first year.” In fact, we received very detailed and comprehensive feedback on how she was doing in every area imaginable. It was well written, perceptive and quite obviously not put together on a teacher’s lap while watching an episode of East Enders. There are 23 children in our daughter’s class, so this was no mean feat.
It prompted me to dig out my own school report. My mother had been keeping these neatly bound together in a file, along with a bizarre collection of handwriting books, newspaper cuttings and end of term reports ranging from 4 to 17 years old. The equivalent report at the end of my first year at school read: “Sophie has settled into school well although she takes life very seriously. She likes playing with the older boys and organising other children. She is a great chatterbox.” I dread to think what my parents thought when they read it. My husband said, “Well, it may be brief but it’s pretty accurate.” So perhaps the first report in life is the most telling. Teachers see a five-year-old for what they are, before they learn to act, lie or be influenced by their friends.
Perhaps employers should be asking for copies of the first school report to really get an insight into a new recruit’s character and personality!
