A parent report has one job: give the parent something they can repeat. "She's doing well" can't be repeated, because there's nothing in it. "Her adding of fractions with unlike denominators went from one in four to two in three" can be repeated to the other parent, to a grandparent, to a friend at the school gate. That's the whole difference, and everything below is in service of it.
The five sections
In this order, because the order is the argument.
| Section | What goes in it | What doesn't |
|---|---|---|
| What they worked on | The topics, by name, as you'd say them in class | Curriculum codes, unit numbers |
| How much | Sets completed out of sets assigned, questions attempted | Attendance percentages, minutes logged |
| What improved | One skill, named, with a before and after | "Good progress", "working hard" |
| What's next | The next topic and when you'll cover it together | A list of everything left in the year |
| A line from you | Two sentences, in your words, about this child | Anything that could be about any child |
The first two sections are facts and take no thought. The third is the one the parent reads. The fourth tells them the tutoring has a direction. The fifth is why they chose you rather than a website.
Specific beats "doing well"
"Doing well" is what a tutor writes when they don't have the data to write anything else. Parents know this, even if they couldn't say so. It reads as a courtesy, and a courtesy is not a reason to re-enrol.
Specific means a skill, named, and a change in it. "Adding with unlike denominators: one in four to two in three." "Reading for inference: getting the literal questions right and now getting about half the inference ones." It doesn't have to be a percentage. It has to be something that was true in week one and is more true now.
If you can't be specific, that tells you something too. It means work is going out and coming back without anyone recording what it showed, and that's worth fixing before the report is. The parent reporting guide covers how to keep the record by hand so the specific sentence is there every fortnight.
One page, and why
A parent reads a report on their phone, in a queue, in forty seconds, and forwards it if it's good. That's the format. Anything longer than a page gets skimmed, and a skimmed report is a report the parent can't repeat.
One page also forces the choice. You can't list every topic and every mark. You have to pick the one skill that improved and put it in the third section, and that discipline is what makes the report worth sending. Leave out the attendance percentage. Leave out the jargon. Leave out anything that would look at home on a school report, because the parent already has one of those and it didn't make them enrol with you.
From your address, with your name
The report comes from you. Your logo at the top, your tutor's name at the bottom, sent from your email. Not from a platform, not from a no-reply address, and not from anyone whose name the parent has never heard.
This matters for a reason that's easy to miss. When a parent replies, and the specific ones get replies, the reply should land in your inbox. That's the conversation that keeps a family, and it starts with a report they could answer.
It also matters in Term 4. A parent who has twenty reports from you in their email, each with your name on it, is holding twenty pieces of evidence that you exist between sessions. A parent who has four invoices is holding four bills.
Fortnightly, and why not weekly
Weekly is noise. A parent can't read a report every Friday, and by the third one it's unopened. Monthly is forgotten. The gap is long enough that each report has to start from scratch, and there's no thread.
Every second Friday is the interval where a parent sees a pattern across a term and still opens each one. By the end of the year that's roughly twenty reports, and the re-enrolment conversation is with a parent who has read them.
What this looks like automatically
On the platform, the report writes itself from the work the student actually did. What they worked on comes from the sets assigned. How much comes from what they completed. What improved comes from accuracy by topic, before and after. What's next comes from what's assigned. The two sentences from you are yours to write, or to edit from a draft, and the whole thing goes out every second Friday with your logo, from your address.
You can review each one before it sends or let them go. The parent reports page shows one, and the mechanism is the same as the hand-written version. It just doesn't need your Friday.
This week
Download the parent report template. It's one page with the five sections and a filled example for a Year 6 maths student. Pick three families, fill it in by hand for each, and send it on Friday from your own email. Then watch which ones reply.