No school should withhold report cards, stationery and textbooks for learners on the basis that parents were unable to honour certain obligations set by schools.
“The National Protocol for Assessment Grade R – 12, section 25 clearly states that: A report card is an official document that is used to give feedback to parents on the achievement of learners. Formal report cards should be sent to parents once a term. The report cards must provide a clear holistic picture of the learner’s achievements in different subjects,”said Jasper Zwane spokesperson for the Department of Education in Mpumalanga.
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He said schools should ensure that there are no errors, erasures or corrections that will comprise the legal status of the report cards. The school management team is responsible to ensure that reports issued to learners do not contain any errors. Learners’ performance for a term should be reflected on the report card for that term.
‘The end-of-year report card should indicate cumulative learner performance for the year. The achievement rating in a report card should be indicated by a combination of national codes, percentages and comments. The national codes and percentages should be in accordance with the stipulations in paragraph 17(4).
Comments should provide more information on the strengths and developmental needs of the learners,” he adds.
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Report cards should include information in the following essential components:
(a) Personal details: Names of the learners, grade and class of the learners, date of birth, school attendance profile.
(b) Official school details: Year and term, name of the school, date, signature and comment of parent or guardian, teacher and principal, dates of closing and opening of school, school stamp, explanation of the codes of the national coding system.
(c) Performance details: National codes and /or a percentage indicating the level of performance per subject and description of the strengths and developmental needs of the learner.
(d) Constructive feedback: The feedback should contain comments about the learner’s performance in relations to his or her previous performance.
“A report card may be produced electronically or manually using different styles preferred by schools but should contain all the information mentioned in sub-paragraph 8.
Schools should not accept report cards with errors from other schools. Once fraudulent report has been identified, the matter should be reported to the principal of the affected school and to the District and /or Provincial Department of Education offices.
In cases where a fraudulent report card is discovered the Head of the Provincial Department of Education should institute an internal investigation of the matter and may take legal steps where necessary.
The parents or guardians have the right of access to report cards of their children.
Schools may not withhold report cards from learners for any reason whatsoever.
