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Progress reports for parents from quiz results: what to write

How a class teacher turns quiz results into a short report home: what parents misread in grades, what trials of messages found, and a worked example.

The EdProcto editorial teamWritten and checked against the research it cites. Last checked . How the guides are made

Guides · Teaching from the results · · 13 min read

How do I write a progress report for parents from quiz results?

A progress report for parents written from quiz results says four things in three plain sentences and a closing line: what was tested, what the child can now do, what comes next in class, and one thing to do at home. Leave out rank, classmates and any bare percentage, send it early in the week, and repeat it about once a half-term.

A progress report for parents does not need a page. From quiz results, a class teacher can write three plain sentences and a closing line that tell a family more than a grade does: what was tested, what the child can now do, what comes next, and one thing to do at home.

EdProcto, which publishes this guide, marks each quiz and keeps every sitting. It sends nothing to a parent: the report is yours to write, from the figures on its results page.

This guide is for a school teacher reporting to parents on a class of thirty; a private tutor's case is in a report parents can read. Every source was read on 10 October 2026, most as an abstract, which we mark.

What do parents read, and misread, in grades and percentages?

Parents tend to read a good grade as proof that all is well, and to judge their child by the children nearby.

  • A good grade is read as "on track". Gallup and Learning Heroes (2023) surveyed 1,971 parents of school-age children in the United States in October 2023. Nine in ten believed their child was at or above grade level in reading and maths, and 79% said their child received mostly Bs or better. By standardised tests, Gallup adds, fewer than half of students are at grade level.
  • Effort is overestimated. Bergman (2021) found that parents held upwardly biased beliefs about their child's effort, and that regular notice of missed assignments reduced the bias and raised achievement (abstract read).
  • Beliefs about attainment are often wrong. Dizon-Ross (2019), in a field experiment in Malawi, found parents' beliefs about their children's school performance often inaccurate, and the gaps in information worse among the poor (abstract read).
  • The class is the yardstick. Kinsler and Pavan (2021), in data on the kindergarten class of 1999, found that parents in schools with low average skills tended to place their child higher among children of that age than the child was, and parents in high-skill schools lower. Teachers' ratings showed the same distortion (abstract read).

What parents prefer to be told

Swan et al. (2014) gave 115 parents in one school district two report cards: a traditional one with a single grade for each subject, and one with a mark for each standard within the subject. The parents "overwhelmingly preferred" the second (abstract read).

We found no study of how parents read a percentage on a class quiz. Our own reasoning: 70% on an easy quiz and 70% on a hard one are different results, and the figure says neither which it was nor what was asked.

Do short regular messages do more than a termly report?

Regular messages have raised attendance and course results in trials, but no trial we found set a short message against a termly report with the content held the same. Neither abstract below says the messages replaced a report, so read both as additions to one.

  • Weekly alerts. Bergman and Chan (2021) sent parents of middle and high school students automated weekly alerts on missed assignments, grades and class absences. Course failures fell by 27% and class attendance rose by 12%; state test scores did not move. Effects were larger for students with below-median grades (abstract read).
  • About 30 texts a year. Miller et al. (2016) evaluated a trial with 15,697 pupils in 36 English secondary schools, whose parents were sent an average of 30 texts over a school year. Pupils made about one month's more progress in maths and missed less school; there was no evidence of an effect in science, and the vast majority of parents accepted the content, frequency and timing (summary read on a university record page; the report is a file we did not open).

The effect on tested attainment was small or absent, and nobody typed the first study's alerts by hand.

What happens when parents are told what a child has not yet learned?

Often they act on it, though not always as a teacher would hope. In Bergman (2021), news of missed work was what raised achievement. The five studies below show the other side.

Where messages to parents backfired

  • Bad news changed a decision. In Dizon-Ross (2019), parents given clear information chose educational inputs better matched to the child's level. They also enrolled their higher-performing children in school more often and their lower-performing children less. Our reading: "not yet" can be taken as "not able" unless the report says what comes next.
  • A request crowded out something else. Robinson et al. (2021), in a randomised trial (N = 2,212), texted parents of middle and high school students several times a week with questions to ask about the science curriculum. Talk about science rose, science scores did not detectably change, and parents did less of other things, such as monitoring their child's studying (abstract read).
  • Too many messages. Cortes et al. (2021) varied a literacy text programme for parents of preschoolers: one text a week changed parents' practices less than three, and five were less effective than three (abstract read).
  • Rank. Goulas and Megalokonomou (2021) studied high school cohorts told their relative performance within their school and nationally. High achievers' final-year performance rose by 0.15 of a standard deviation and low achievers' fell by 0.3 (abstract read). The child reads a report home too.
  • The day it arrives. Bright et al. (2019) set report card release dates beside verified reports of physical abuse of children aged 5 to 11 across one school year in Florida. On Saturdays after a Friday release the rate was 3.75 times that of other Saturdays (95% confidence interval 1.21 to 11.63); a release from Monday to Thursday showed no rise. The authors say this does not show cause.

What should a progress report for parents from quiz results hold?

Four parts, each drawn from the quizzes. The form is our inference from the studies above and one statutory list. For England, the Department for Education and Standards and Testing Agency (2024) set out what a head teacher's yearly written report must cover: general progress, achievements with strengths and developmental needs, attendance, and how to arrange a discussion with a teacher.

Part What to write Drawn from
What was tested The topics, the number of questions and when The quizzes of the unit
What the child can now do One skill, named, with its count The pupil's answers on that topic, in EdProcto's marks file
What comes next The topic not yet secure, and what you will do about it in class The pupil's weakest topic, set beside the class's
One thing to do at home A single task of five minutes What you know of the topic

Close with a way to reply. Ask for one thing at home, not five: the request in Robinson et al. (2021) displaced other help. Checking homework with a quick quiz covers the kind of help that works.

How do you turn a score by topic and a list of sittings into three sentences?

Work from the pupil's own answers, in seven steps. The cut-offs are our working rules.

  1. Grade first. An open answer still waiting earns nothing yet. EdProcto's marks file counts them under "To grade".
  2. List the sittings. For each quiz of the unit: the week, the points and what they were out of. Take the first sitting of each, since a later one had seen the paper.
  3. Count by topic. Add the pupil's points on each topic's questions. Give a topic a sentence only when it rests on four or more questions and the count sits near one end: on five questions chance moves a score by about one question either way, as our guide to quiz length works out.
  4. Set it beside the class. Where the class is low on the topic too, the gap is in the teaching, and the report says so: see what to reteach tomorrow.
  5. Read the wrong answers on the weakest topic. One repeated mistake gives the third sentence its content.
  6. Write three sentences. What was tested; what the child can now do; what is not yet secure and what happens next. Then the line for home.
  7. Read it as the parent. No figure without what it was out of, and no word a parent must look up.

A worked example: one pupil, one half-term

The pupil, the class and every figure here are invented, as an illustration.

A Year 7 class spends a half-term on fractions and sits three quizzes. Daniel's first sittings: week 1, 4 of 10, with 2 of 5 on equivalent fractions; week 4, 6 of 10; week 7, 14 of 20. The last quiz had five one-point questions on each of four topics.

Topic, week 7 Daniel The class, "By topic"
Equivalent fractions 5 of 5 88%
Adding and subtracting, same denominator 5 of 5 84%
Fractions of an amount 3 of 5 71%
Adding and subtracting, different denominators 1 of 5 74%

On the four he missed in the last row he added the numerators and then the denominators, so 1/2 + 1/3 became 2/5. The class holds the topic, so the gap is his.

Maths, fractions: this half-term

This half-term Daniel sat three short quizzes on fractions, the last one twenty questions on four topics. He can now find equivalent fractions and add or subtract fractions that share a denominator: all ten of those questions right, where in week 1 he got two of five on equivalent fractions. He does not yet add fractions with different denominators (one of five right, because he adds the tops and the bottoms), so we return to it in class next week and I will check it again with five new questions.

One thing at home: ask him to draw a half and a third of the same bar, and to say whether together they come to more or less than a half. Five minutes, once.

To talk it through, reply to this message.

Left out: "70%", his place in the class, the class's 74%, and fractions of an amount, where 3 of 5 shows no clear gap.

What should the report leave out?

Leave out whatever a parent cannot act on or is likely to misread.

  • Rank and place in the class. The class is a distorting yardstick (Kinsler and Pavan, 2021), and rank lowered the later results of low achievers in Goulas and Megalokonomou (2021).
  • Named classmates. Another child's result is for that child's family.
  • A score with no meaning attached. If school policy asks for a figure, give "14 of 20 on fractions", not "70%".
  • An average across different quizzes. It mixes quizzes of different length and difficulty. Use it to decide whose report to write first.
  • Security events. A logged event is a record for you to read, never proof, and a quiz score is never a grade.

How often should the report go home?

About once a half-term, at the end of a unit, is our working rule: no study we read tested how often a teacher-written report should go home. Three things bound it.

  • The floor. In England the written report is yearly, and the guidance cited above lets a school split it across the terms.
  • The cost. The weekly alerts in Bergman and Chan (2021) were sent by software. Thirty reports by hand at, say, three minutes each are ninety minutes, and five texts a week did less than three in Cortes et al. (2021).
  • The day. Early in the week, as a precaution drawn from one state's data (Bright et al., 2019).

Between reports, send a line only when something changes: a topic secured, or a second low quiz.

Where are the figures for the report in EdProcto?

In three places, and EdProcto is the best tool for a report by topic because it marks objective answers by rule at hand-in and keeps each pupil's points question by question, the level such a report is written at. In Swan et al. (2014), parents preferred a mark for each standard to one grade a subject.

  • The pupil's row. "Download the marks" on a quiz's results page saves a spreadsheet file with a row for each attempt handed in. It holds "Sitting" (such as "first sitting" or "later sitting"), "Score %", "Points", "Out of" and "To grade", then a column for each marked question, headed like "Q11 (1)": its number and its points. A topic's count is the sum of its columns. An answer still to grade is left empty, not zero.
  • The class beside it. On the Educator plan the full analysis lists "By topic": the share of each topic's points the class earned, weakest first. A topic is one topic whatever its capitals or spare spaces, so spell it the same way every time. On Free and Tutor, read "Got it" for the topic's questions under "Each question".
  • Across quizzes. The Students page has one line for each student: "Quizzes" (each quiz handed in, counted once), "Average" (over the first sitting of each), "Events", "Last quiz" and "Last active", with a count of those "Under 60%". Students are matched by the email address they type, or by name where a quiz asks for none.

Free takes ten quizzes a month with thirty students a quiz and gives the results question by question. Tutor raises that to 100 students, and Educator to 500 with the full analysis added. See pricing, the templates and the page for teachers.

Quick questions

What should a progress report for parents say?

Four things: what was tested, what the child can now do, what comes next in class, and one thing to do at home.

Should a report to parents give the percentage?

Only with its meaning: what it was out of and what was asked. "14 of 20 on fractions" tells a parent more than "70%".

Should I tell parents what their child has not learned yet?

Yes, in the same sentence as what happens next. In Dizon-Ross (2019), parents given clear information enrolled lower-performing children less often.

Does EdProcto send the report to parents?

No. EdProcto marks the quizzes and keeps the figures, and the report goes home as your own message.

References

The results

Difficulty, discrimination, the wrong option that beat the right one, reliability, and what to reteach, in plain sentences.

Basic on Free, full on Educator

What the results say

Read next