Student reporting: Where to from here?

Across Australia, as in many other locations, there is a long tradition of schools engaging in activities intended to communicate information about student learning each year. Given the tremendous investment of effort in these activities by teachers and principals, questions of great interest include: are these activities providing quality information about student learning, and are there alternative designs for these activities that might provide ‘better’ information about student learning? Over the last three years, we have investigated these questions through the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) Communicating Student Learning Progress project (Hollingsworth, Heard & Weldon, in press). Our investigation has focused on the national research, policy and practice landscape related to how information about student learning is communicated, and in particular, what student reporting looks like. This article presents some of the insights into student reporting revealed through our investigation. A brief summary of some of the prevailing issues related to student reporting is presented first to provide a context for current policies and practice. This is followed by a discussion of the growing use by schools of electronic systems and tools to communicate student learning, and the opportunities and possibilities that these systems offer for reporting.