The Trouble with Progress Reports

The case for and against telling parents whether students are making progress

Few words in education carry as much positive weight as progress. It is, after all, what schools exist to deliver. So it is no surprise that many schools in England report whether students are “making expected progress” in each subject, sometimes alongside attainment, sometimes instead of it.

At first glance, this seems the perfect solution. Attainment measures can feel harsh, especially for students who are far from the top of the class. But progress? That suggests movement, growth, the possibility of success for everyone. It captures the very thing we want students to do: learn more today than they knew yesterday.

And yet, what sounds so appealing in principle becomes much murkier in practice. What does it really mean to say a student is making progress? How do we measure it? And what are the risks of reporting it to parents and students?

The case for reporting progress

The case for reporting progress is straightforward. It is, quite literally, the thing we want students to do: to learn more and to improve in their subjects. To report progress is to keep the focus on learning itself, rather than just on the snapshot of where a student currently sits.

Progress also has a motivational edge. Attainment is a game that not everyone can win. If you start the year well behind your peers, there is little chance that, no matter how hard you work, you will end up near the top of the attainment table. Progress, by contrast, is a game that everyone can, in theory, succeed at. Even low attainers can improve markedly over time, and being recognised for that growth can sustain effort and confidence.

This makes progress a more inclusive measure. It is not about who is “best”, but about who is moving forward. For teachers and parents who want to emphasise persistence and the value of hard work, progress reporting carries an obvious appeal.

The case against reporting progress, part 1: Mistaking other things for progress

For all its appeal, the idea of reporting progress stumbles on a basic problem: much of what schools call progress is not really progress at all.

Often, attainment is simply repackaged as progress. A student who ends the year with strong test scores may be reported as “making excellent progress,” when in fact they already knew much of the material at the start. This is particularly common in subjects such as music, drama and PE, where some students participate in extensive out-of-school activities. Their past attainment or Key Stage score bears no relation to their true subject prior attainment.

Sometimes effort gets mistaken for progress. A student who works hard in class, hands in homework on time, and appears diligent may be judged to be “progressing well,” even if their attainment has barely shifted. Conversely, a student who finds the work easy and messes about in class may be making significant gains in knowledge while appearing to put in little visible effort, and is thus judged as making “less than expected progress”.

Behaviour and attendance, too, can masquerade as progress. Simply showing up regularly, appearing to listen attentively, or avoiding disruption is valuable in its own right, but it is not the same thing as learning more.

The case against reporting progress, part 2: The noisy data problem

Even when schools try to measure progress more rigorously, the data itself rarely stands up to scrutiny.

To judge whether a student has progressed, we need two reliable points of comparison: a clear starting measure and a clear end measure. In reality, we often only have one. End-of-year attainment may be measured with some confidence, but the starting point is fuzzier, based on partial data, attainment in other subjects, or teacher judgement. Without a solid baseline, claims about progress rest on shaky ground.

Even in subjects like maths, where schools sometimes administer standardised assessments at both the start and end of the year, the picture is still unreliable. Short tests simply aren’t precise enough to capture small changes in learning. A single score is always a noisy estimate of what a student knows, affected by sampling of questions, marking quirks, and the student’s performance on the day (as wrote about here).

When we compare two noisy measures – one at the start and one at the end - the signal of changes in attainment becomes very faint relative to the noise of uncertainty. A student who looks to be falling behind may have simply made a silly mistake or two in the test. In practice, most reported differences in progress are indistinguishable from chance. This happens because year-on-year changes in attainment tend to be quite small, relative to levels of and variation in attainment, especially in secondary school. (This is a very brief summary of a complex argument, so if you are interested in understanding more, do read this blog post I wrote on the issue many years ago).

Why this matters

Some might argue that none of this really matters. Parents, after all, often care most about attainment: the grades and qualifications that open doors to the next stage. Whether a school says their child is “making good progress” may feel like a polite aside.

But for students, the stakes are higher. Progress reports are read as feedback about effort, potential, and identity. If the message they receive does not match what they feel about their own learning, the trust between effort and reward can break down (as we wrote about in this post). A student who works hard but is told they are “not progressing” may lose heart. Another who has coasted but is reported as “making excellent progress” may become complacent.

Inconsistency across subjects compounds the problem. A student may be told they are making strong progress in history but weak progress in science, even when the reality is simply that the two departments use different measures or notions of progress, an issue we have written about in previous posts. Such contradictions risk undermining the capacity of reporting to promote learning altogether.

When progress reporting sends signals that are noisy, arbitrary, or misaligned with students’ lived experience, it does more harm than good.

What schools could do instead

If progress reporting is so fraught with problems, what should schools do? Scrapping the idea entirely might be too blunt an answer, but a more critical and disciplined approach is needed.

The first step is to review whether reported progress measures are meaningful at all. Teachers should interrogate the basis of their judgements in each subject. Are they really capturing learning gains, or are they just re-labelling attainment, effort, or behaviour? If the measure is only a proxy, then the label “progress” is misleading.

Schools should also recognise that not every subject, or every year group within a subject, is equally suited to reporting progress. Where students begin with very little prior knowledge, as is often the case in Year 7 for many subjects, progress and attainment are effectively the same thing. In these cases, separate progress reporting adds little value. Departments should have the freedom to decide whether progress reporting is genuinely possible for their context.

Crucially, schools should ask whether progress reporting is necessary at all. If the real purpose is to encourage and acknowledge effort, i.e. turning up, completing homework, working hard in class, then why not report on effort directly? This avoids conflating effort with progress and gives students credit for what is actually being observed.

Where schools do persist with progress reporting, they should be transparent about its limitations. Progress language should be used carefully, kept distinct from effort or behaviour, and grounded in multiple sources of evidence rather than a single test. Alternative motivational signals may also be more effective: for instance, highlighting improvement in specific skills or celebrating persistence in tackling difficult material.

In short, schools need not abandon the idea of progress entirely, but they must treat it with caution. A critical eye, subject-level reflection, and honesty with students and parents can prevent progress reporting from becoming an empty ritual.

Conclusion: A tempting but flawed signal

Progress reporting is one of those ideas that seems irresistible in theory. It captures the essence of what schools are for, offers a motivational promise that every student can succeed, and reassures parents that learning is moving in the right direction.

But in practice, the concept is far less sturdy. Too often, progress is nothing more than attainment dressed in new clothes, or else a proxy for effort, behaviour, or attendance. Where schools try to measure it more precisely, the results are undermined by noisy data and unreliable comparisons.

This matters because assessment is not just a record-keeping exercise: it sends powerful signals to students about the link between effort and achievement. If those signals are muddled or misleading, they risk eroding motivation rather than strengthening it.