Last session I wrote a fairly substantial piece on reporting. This was principally concerned with primary reports as the Filemaker format for secondary reporting is more concerned with pull down menus and short comments than the Proustian free prose of primary reports (the shortest of this session’s weigh in around 190 words and the longest at 290).

The thrust of last session’s post was about opening up the report from the preceding session and overwriting it. This allows me to resurrect points made then and to report, for example, whether the recommendations for improvement have been followed and the desired improvements made.

However, I did not mention one other factor which has only come to my attention through the luxury of completing this session’s reports well before the deadline and that is to do with checking. By that, I don’t mean spelling, grammar etc. but simply whether every element of the report is really true. For this to take place, at least one lesson has to take place between writing the report and submitting it. Positive characteristics may appear in the lesson which are not in the report. Exasperating tendencies may appear to take up more time due to prose lacking streamlining than really is the case in lessons. I can’t help feeling that the real truth of any element is affected by the proportion of the report devoted to it compared to all the possible things that could have been said.