The debates that await the world of education reveal divergent perceptions and understandings with regard to certain concepts or phenomena. The issue of the newsletter, recently debated in the news, is no exception.
The context
The latest educational reform has led us towards an assessment by skills. School reports, three in number per year, are then made up of ratings. This bulletin format is therefore disputed. Result: return of the encrypted ballot and the average. During the COVID-19 pandemic, two report cards rather than three are required in order to give teachers more flexibility in their evaluation. The current debate, fueled by actors wishing to return to two report cards and by some questioning the relevance of numerical marks, hides real issues related to the evaluation of learning.
The bulletin
The report card’s primary function is to inform parents and students of the progress made in class learning (MELS, 2003). The times when bulletins are distributed are important because they make it possible to put in place – if necessary – a variety of means aimed at supporting student learning. However, in 2023, with the proliferation of digital platforms made available to teachers to share information with parents, the newsletter is no longer the only tool that can fulfill this communication function. There is therefore no longer any reason to think about it exclusively through this function.
Drifts
Many school actors associate the production of the bulletin with managerial pressure aimed at reporting on student learning at an imposed time. We note at least three difficulties concerning the issue of report cards in their current form:
- The validity of the judgment expressed: the teacher does not always record and observe enough situations in which the student had the opportunity to independently demonstrate the skills targeted for the first report card;
- The formal nature of the report card: the report card can, in certain situations, create a feeling of injustice in both the student and the teacher. On the one hand, for the student who may have the impression of a lack of consistency between the comments received during the stage and the grade obtained at the end of the stage. On the other hand, for the teacher who sees the result of the ministerial tests interfere in the exercise of his professional judgment as to the achievement of skills by the student at the end of the school year;
- Production of the final result: the mark obtained by the student in June (sum of the marks associated with the previous report cards) does not necessarily agree with the mark that the teacher would like to communicate when carrying out the assessment of the school year concerning the attainment of skills by the student.
Considerable reflection is necessary with regard to evaluation in Quebec. If the debate on report cards above all reveals questions about the evaluation of learning, should we not remember that the information they make it possible to collect also serves to inform public decision-makers about the performance of school staff, schools, and even school service centres? Isn’t there a risk here of distorting – by virtue of accountability – the school’s mission aimed at educational success for all?