Academic reporting is an essential process for every school, serving as an important record of student progress and overall school achievement. However, behind every well-written academic report is a complex ecosystem of people, processes, and data. As schools strive to meet the growing demands for detailed and personalised reports, software is the key to balancing delivery expectations with efficiency.
iSAMS supports your reporting cycle from start to finish. See how:
The right software can streamline the academic reporting process, ensuring accuracy, consistency, and time-savings for all those involved in the reporting cycle. However, with the growing number of available school software options, it’s not always easy to know what solutions are vital and which are simply adding more steps in the process.
What software do schools really need to support their teachers during the school reports cycle? And how can they support the reporting writing process and optimise time management for all involved?
It’s often forgotten that academic report writing doesn’t just rely on your school’s teachers. A range of employees must interact with the data at all stages of the cycle to ensure accuracy and better school-wide communication.
Your software needs to support all steps in the process, so who do you need to bear in mind when choosing your school’s reporting tech stack and where do these parties support the reporting cycle?
Teachers:
This seems like stating the obvious, but teachers are at the heart of academic reporting. They gather your student’s assessment data, observe their behaviour during lesson time, and ultimately create the report comments and grades to be shared with parents and students. This means that their workload is often substantial during the reports cycle, on top of their usual lesson planning, delivery, and learning management. Therefore, any snags or friction in the process can add even more pressure onto these valuable members of staff.
Learn about iSAMS Gradebooks for grade management and reporting here.
Data Managers or School IT:
Fundamentally, your school cannot operate without foundational software and the support of your school’s IT department. They ensure that key information is accessible to all that need it, and this is particularly important during school reports season.
Academic reports pull information from all areas of your school management system. The maintenance of an integrated database is an important step in facilitating your teacher’s ability to complete their reports in a timely manner.
Learn about solutions to support your Data Manager’s during school reports season here.
Department Heads, Senior Leaders, and Academic Leaders:
Department heads are key stakeholders and are able to ensure consistency across departments during the reporting cycle. They likely will be part of the final review stage and the main point of approval for reports, ensuring that grading practices are standardised - and comments are appropriate.
Senior leadership may have a more hands-off role relating to the generation of individual reports, but their main priority is the maintenance of overall reporting standards and monitoring trends in academic performance. This ensures that all reporting aligns with wider school goals.
Pastoral staff:
While your student’s academic performance is often considered the most important element of school success, it’s important to remember that assessment data isn’t the only contributing factor to those scores. Your pastoral teams can offer their insights into student wellbeing, behaviour, and how engaged your student body is overall. This offers a more holistic view of student development, which is a vital inclusion on academic reports. Both your school staff and your community of parents will find this information valuable to better inform learning and overall guidance for students.
Parents and Guardians:
Ultimately, academic reports are vital in ensuring effective communication with parents and guardians about their child’s achievements during the term or year. Clarity, accessibility, and efficient delivery are vital in ensuring a strong connection between the school and its community of parents. Working as a unit, schools and parents can empower students to grow and develop for a strong future.
Software can support the parent-school relationship by providing parents with easy access to key report and grade information via mobile portals, dedicated to their child’s learning experience. Providing visibility of academic performance in real time ensures a concerted effort to each student’s progress from all parties.
With so many contributors for each report cycle, any friction in the process can lead to delays, miscommunication, and inconsistencies across reports or departments. This is where software can help to strengthen processes and better serve all users at this important time of year.
In the first instance, academic reporting seems like a relatively straightforward task, with three key steps - collect data, write comments, and share the report. However, for teachers and school staff, it’s a variable process that includes assessments, pastoral inputs, comment writing, formatting, editing, and distribution. This must also be shared within a tight timeframe and to a consistent standard.
Software addresses these challenges by making reporting a more manageable, even strategic, process. It provides a centralised platform where all student information, from academic records to pastoral notes, can be accessed securely by authorised staff, thereby eliminating siloed working and reducing the duplication of work.
The right software also supports collaboration. Teachers can draft reports in a shared space, while heads of department and SLT members can review and approve them in real time. Templates ensure consistency in format and tone, and features like comment boxes help reduce repetitive writing while ensuring a personalised approach.
Additionally, simple automation tools mean fewer errors, faster processing, and more time for staff to focus on content rather than administration. For instance, automatic spellcheck, notification alerts, and auto-populated data fields all contribute to a smoother workflow. This means high quality, insightful reports delivered on time.
It’s clear, then, that truly effective academic reporting needs more than just a simple word processor or spreadsheets. A comprehensive, integrated approach to software is vital – with a system that understands the unique requirements of school operations. Here are the key systems that your school needs during this busy time of year:
iSAMS is uniquely positioned to support schools through every stage of the academic reporting process. Built specifically for the Independent education sector, the fully integrated, cloud-based school management system streamlines reporting and connects all key stakeholders with ease.
Benefit from a number of dedicated iSAMS solutions for academic reporting, all integrated with the powerful school management system, including:
The iSAMS School Reporting module allows schools to design their own report templates, define grading criteria, and control every aspect of the reporting cycle. Teachers can enter data directly, with helpful automated workflows to ensure that reports are carried out smoothly. Not only that, the dedicated grading module – Gradebooks – sits within the iSAMS school management system. This solution feeds subject data directly into school reports, reducing the need for manual data entry.
Students can also provide their personal goal grades, which are published to Gradebooks for teachers to access. This means that teachers can track progress against personal goals, advise them on their performance, and ensure they’re right on track to meet their expected achievements.
This vital data integrates effortlessly with the iTeacher and iReport apps. These systems offer teachers a new way to complete reports, entirely at their convenience. The iReport app offers cloud-based, integrated functionality for writing and submitting grades, assessments, and school reports – wherever they are. It’s intuitive and easy to use, enabling teaching staff to manage their time even more efficiently.
Reports Designer is the latest addition to the iSAMS suite of reporting solutions. Whether you're customising existing reports, updating school-built templates, or creating new reports from scratch, Reports Designer offers a fresh and user-friendly interface to make it simple. Access data from across your iSAMS ecosystem, from academic performance and attendance to house points and end-of-year reports, and present it your way.
As expectations around personalised learning and parental engagement continue to grow, schools must evolve their processes to keep up. A digital-first approach to academic reporting is no longer optional - it’s a necessity for any school that spearheads consistency and transparency.