1. The Primary Profile and Report
Parent information
Spring 2012
Welcome – the outcome of the session should be – will be – a sound understanding of the Highland Primary Profile and Report.
A reassurance - in many respects, the Profile and Report format is the same as that for last year’s Report – but there are some vital differences.

2. Our Success Criteria
We understand the overall purpose of the Highland Profile and Report
We understand the place of the Profile and Report in the school’s sharing information approach
We understand how each page of the Profile and Report ‘works’
We understand how as parents we might respond to the Profile and Report
By the end of this activity, then, we should have achieved our success criteria.

3. The Scottish Government P7 Profile in 2011- 12 S3 Profile in 2012 - 13
Information on progress and achievement in literacy, numeracy and in health and wellbeing
Information on progress and achievement across curriculum areas best achievements
A learner’s statement – best achievements in and out of school
A record of qualifications and awards
Why a ‘Profile’ ?
In 2010, the Scottish Government announced that each child in P7 and S3 was to have a ‘Profile’ from these dates on. This ‘Profile’ should include the information listed.
The purpose of the Profile is to provide – for learner and parents/carers – a full picture of the ‘whole child’. This picture should celebrate achievements in school, in the home and in the community. It should build confidence. It should give the child a ‘voice’ – show that his/her opinion matters. Copies of Profiles for P7 pupils will be made available to their Secondary school to aid transition.
Highland broadly welcomed this announcement. It fitted in with the Local Authority’s developing approach to profiling and reporting. Highland Primary Reports were already in a format which had the potential to meet all of the requirements of the P7 Profile. This format included a pupil section and a parent response.
The Highland Learning, Teaching and Assessment Group amended the Report format and consulted teachers and parents about the new version. The result was the Profile and Report – a summary statement of progress made available towards the end of Session.
The Profile and Report provides an opportunity for teacher, learner and parent/carer to take stock - step back, reflect about learning over a whole year, judge on progress and decide what next.

4. Sharing Information about Progress with Parents
Small steps in learning
Continuous through jotters, learning logs, diaries, folders, portfolios, self assessment sheets, parents’ evenings, open days
Taking stock – the bigger picture
- Annual through the Profile and Report
It’s helpful to think of the Profile and Report within the context of sharing information with parents throughout the Year.
Schools continuously share information about small steps in progress – using capitals and full stops, speaking clearly and purposefully to inform or direct a group, learning times tables, etc. This sharing of achievement and progress is done in a variety of ways.
The Profile and Report is a summary of these small steps. Once (maybe twice) a year, it’s useful to step back, take an overview and summarise how far the learner has come. What can we celebrate? Where is he or she is in relation to his or her potential? Where is he or she in relation to our shared expectations for his or her age group? What next for this child, this lifelong learner?

5. levels are open ended - allow children to progress in different ways
Page 1 shows Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) levels at which most children should be working
levels are open ended - allow children to progress in different ways
where child not working within appropriate level then this reflected in teacher’s comments
Page 1 provides basic information about where your child is in relation to Curriculum for Excellence levels – 3 years of learning. Obviously given the time-frames, these are very broad descriptions of learning and almost all children will be achieving some things within the level appropriate for their age.
The levels are “open-ended”, allowing learners to work in different ways with varying degrees of breadth, challenge and application. What does this mean?
Curriculum for Excellence means that learning happens in a wide range of contexts and encourages children to apply their learning in ‘real life’ and new situations. For instance, children may know their 5 times table and be able to recite it quickly but can they use it to solve a problem such as: How many 5 seater cars would be needed to take 23 people on a trip to the zoo?
In addition some learning outcomes are on-going and may well not be formally assessed. For instance one of the Health and Wellbeing Outcomes says: “I enjoy eating a diversity of foods in a range of social situations.” Clearly, teachers are not going to assess your child formally on this but schools will make sure that children have opportunities to eat healthily in all aspects of their life at school.
The main point is that the curriculum is FLEXIBLE. It allows learning to progress in different ways so that all learners may be challenged and achieve.
QUESTIONS?

6. Page 2 – The Learner’s Statement
your child’s view of his / her learning throughout the year - reflect on progress in learning - be self-aware and celebrate achievements - take more responsibility for own learning
In Highland we have encouraged children to contribute to their report in some way for a number of years. Parents have told us that they really like this. In addition Curriculum for Excellence encourages children to become more confident through self-awareness and self- knowledge. Beginning with your child’s view is recognition that his/her opinion matters.
The Learner’s Statement is a development of the Pupil Comment in the previous Highland Report format. The teacher should guide, facilitate, encourage and support but should not decide what is recorded.
The Statement is an opportunity for the learner to step back, reflect and talk about what she has achieved. This dialogue may be with peers and/or parents and/or the teacher. It should be meaningful from the learner’s viewpoint. The achievements which are recorded in the Learner’s Statement should be chosen by the learner and may be drawn from experience in school and/or beyond. Such an activity takes time and are approached by teacher and learner as a significant element of the PSE programme.
QUESTIONS?

7. Page 3 – Teacher’s comments
literacy
numeracy
health and wellbeing
other curricular areas
next steps
This page contains information about your child’s progress across the curriculum.
The main focus is on the core skills of Literacy, Maths and Health and well-being. The teacher will comment on progress in each.
On the right hand side there are comments from a Highland-wide comment bank about how your child is progressing in relation to his /her potential and how your child is performing in relation to the standards expected for their age group. This is explained in further detail in later slides.
In the ‘Other curricular areas’ section, the teacher comments on selected areas of the curriculum from Religious Education, Science, Expressive Arts (Art, Music, PE and Drama) Social Studies (History and Geography), Technologies and any other languages your child is learning.
At the bottom of this page will be your child’s agreed next steps in learning. These will have been discussed and agreed in class.
QUESTIONS?

8. Progress statement
professional judgement – from full range of evidence for reading, writing and maths
One of the following :
is consistently achieving his / her potential
is achieving success but has the potential to achieve more
is only sometimes achieving his / her potential
is yet to achieve his / her potential
How and why do we measure potential?
This is a matter of professional judgement based on a range of assessments over time. Teachers over time get to know their pupils well and have a good understanding of what they are capable of achieving. Some children may struggle with a subject but through hard work, perseverance and effective thinking manage to progress well. On the other hand, others may find a subject easy and “coast” through their learning.
Parents told us that they valued this kind of information and felt that it was important that hard work and perseverance were acknowledged whatever the ‘level’ of achievement.

9. Performance statement
professional judgement – from full range of evidence for reading, writing and maths
One of the following :
- consistently performing beyond standard for age/stage
- consistently performing at standard for age/stage and
sometimes beyond
- sometimes performing at standard for age/stage
- not yet performing at standard for age/stage
The Performance statement gives an indication of where your child is performing in relation to what might be reasonably expected of someone at his or her age – ‘national standards’ if you like.
Taken together with the statement about individual potential, this provides you with a good overview of how your child is doing.
Some questions and answers from our consultation with parents:
My child’s report says that my child is not yet performing at the expected standard for his/her class but is consistently achieving his/her potential. Should I be worried?
No you should be proud. This means that, whilst your child finds some areas of learning difficult, he/she constantly tries hard and gives his/her best.
My child’s report says that he/she is consistently performing beyond the expected standard for his/her class. Does this mean he/she should move up a year group?
No, the curriculum is designed to challenge more able children within their class.

10. Page 4 – Teacher’s (and HT’s) Comments on Learning
confirms Learner’s Statement
recognises Four Capacities ?
other areas of achievement and/or note ?
Page 4 affords the teacher (and HT) an opportunity to focus on the whole child and to comment on the Learner and his/her achievements.
QUESTIONS?

11. Parent/Carer Response Sheet
your opportunity to share your views about your child’s learning - achievements at home and in the community - confident individual, effective contributor, responsible citizen, successful learner - particular successes or interests at school - next steps for child, parent/carer and school?
The booklet of the Profile and Report will contain a simple Parent Response Sheet – essentially, a blank page! This will complete a three-way commentary about your child and his/her progress. Quite a powerful document!
What as a parent do you think it is important to contribute - to record for child and teachers about your child and his/her learning?

12. Questions?
As always, this must be played by ear to some extent. It may not be needed if there has been a pause for questions after each slide.
The facilitator may wish to afford a few minutes for pair discussion and then plenary questions. He/she may also wish to use the success criteria in the next slide as a structure for questions before evaluating the activity overall.
Where you don’t have the answer, say you will pass the question on to the LTA Group (or Dave McCartney/Deirdre Murray).

13. Reviewing against our success criteria
We understand the purpose of the P7 Profile and the nature of national requirements in relation to structure and content
We understand why Highland is adopting an approach which amalgamates the P7 Profile and the Highland Annual Summary Report to Parents
We understand how teachers will complete their sections of the Profile and Report
We understand how learners may complete their section of the Profile and Report – The Learner’s Statement
The presenter can undertake this review using traffic lighting, think-pair-share, a written test (!) - ask the group beforehand how they would like to conduct the review . . .
If misunderstanding or doubt is evident, then go back and clarify through discussion.

14. Profiling/ Portfolio-ing/ Reporting
The future is
electronic !
GLOW Blogs and e1
FINALLY – the presenter may decide to omit this or keep it brief. It depends on how much time is available and whether on the day, it might just muddy the waters.
How does the Profile and Report fit in to the longer term picture of recording and evidencing and reporting pupil progress?
Highland has a vision and the future is electronic – learner, teacher and parent engaged on-line electronically recording and sharing information to help the learner to improve. Paper will always be available, though, for those who do not have internet access.
We know the current difficulties in realising that vision – capacity with a particular emphasis on hardware that is sufficient and fit for purpose, software that meets our needs and teacher skills. The two main vehicles for this vision are GLOW (or son of) and Phoenix e1. WE are in discussion with the makers of e1 to ensure that information will flow between the two. Deirdre Murray and others are currently working on the use of Blogs on GLOW as the vehicles for profiling and maintaining e-portfolios. Reporting to parents will be a function of e1 with a format identical to (or very similar to) the Profile and Report format. Deirdre’s work (and her own Profile) is currently available on GLOW.