Online reporting boots up

By now all secondary schools should have had a letter and toolkit explaining the government's expectations around online reporting (formerly real-time reporting) to parents. The plan is for all secondary schools to provide this from September 2010.

While ASCL recognises the many positive points of online reporting, we are also concerned about the expectations and timescale being placed on schools to deliver. There are also the issues of interoperability of software which could be a major barrier to implementation.

However, ASCL did successfully head off a government proposal to insist that schools produce termly reports from September 2008 until online reports start.

ASCL is represented on the secondary school reference group. ASCL vice president Jane Lees is in one of the pilot schools and as such is trying to ensure that government expectations are tempered with reality.