Under ACT and Commonwealth legislation and regulations all schools are required to provide written reports of student achievement twice a year to parents of students in Preschool to Year 12. In the past there have been school-based formats for students in preschool to Year 10. All Year 1-12 students are required to receive grades. EAL/D students who have been in the country less than one year are exempt.

In 2019 the Education Directorate is introducing a system-generated common report format, for students in Kindergarten to Year 10, through the new Student Administration System (SAS). This change will occur via a staged implementation process, with some schools piloting the new report format in Semester 1, 2019.

What is the same?

All reports to students from Kindergarten to Year 10 have always included and will continue to include the following information:

• academic achievement in relation to the prescribed ACT curriculum and associated achievement standards for each subject
• for students in Kindergarten, a five-point scale used to indicate academic achievement
• for students in Years 1 to 10, a five-point A-E scale used to indicate academic achievement
• for students in Years 1 -6, student effort in each learning area
• for students in Years 7-10, work habits in each learning area
• personal and social capabilities.

A college-based format remains in place for students in Years 11 and 12 and is governed by the Board of Senior Secondary Studies (BSSS).

Preschool reports will continue to be provided using a school-based report format.

What is different?

Previously school-based reports have allowed schools to make decisions regarding the detail included against a learning area. For example some schools reported against English using the different strands e.g. writing, reading, viewing, listening and speaking; whilst some other schools reported on English using school-generated outcome statements.

The new system-generated common report format uses information directly from the subject area Achievement Standards outlined in the Australian Curriculum. Achievement Standards set the goal for what all students should learn as they progress through their school life – wherever they live in Australia and whichever school they attend. From the first year of school to Year 10, students develop knowledge and skills in eight learning areas: English, Mathematics, Science, Health and Physical Education (HPE), Humanities and Social Sciences (HASS), The Arts, Technologies, Languages.

Each learning area contains content descriptions accompanied by Achievement Standards that describe what students will know and will be able to do as a result of teaching and learning in the classroom. For example ‘count to and from 20 and order small collections’. Schools will select when they report against different sentences in the Achievement Standard.

The new SAS generated report format will help ACT public schools to provide greater consistency when reporting student achievement to families. 

The Australian Curriculum is accessible to all students and there is parent-friendly information available at www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/parent-information/

In the ACT, a ‘C’ grade indicates the student is on track and demonstrating achievement at the standard. A ‘C’ grade is to be celebrated.

Parents will be provided an opportunity to provide feedback on the new system-generated common report format early in Term 3. 

If you have feedback on the new report template, we'd love to hear it - simply This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. We'll collect and collate parent views and ideas and feed them back to the Directorate.

This article appeared in ParentACTion Magazine, Term 2, 2019.