Parent Reports - Create and Manage Report Templates

Your Admin users can customise your Parent Reports by creating templates using Microsoft Word.

Read on for an explanation of what templates are and how to create them, or watch this recording of our "Creating Custom Parent Reports" webinar, presented by James Pembroke.

What is a Parent Report Template?

The design of each parent report is defined by a template - a simple Word file which tells Insight what information you want displayed on the report and where you want it located. Because it's a Word document, you have total control over the design, right down to colour scheme, background, images, tables, and logos.

You can set up as many templates as you need for teachers to use when writing reports for parents. You might need different ones for each year group, or a set of termly parent reports and a different set of statutory assessment reports. EYFS templates may reference the 7 areas of learning and development, for example, which wouldn't be needed for later years.

Preset Templates

Insight provides some default templates to get you started. The "Custom" template is a basic template for reporting a pupil's termly assessments alongside a teacher comment. The other options (EYFS, Phonics, KS1, KS2, Objectives) include the required information for reporting statutory assessments (eg national averages).

You can tweak and replace all of these to suit your school, and/or design additional templates to meet your needs. If you prefer, the system allows you to build one template that combines all these into a single parent report containing comments, pupil information (including attendance), termly assessments (including test scores), statutory assessments, targets, and objectives.

Creating and Customising Templates

It's unlikely the preset templates will meet all your requirements, so you'll need to amend them or build new ones. Here we'll walk you through how to amend the Custom template.

To get started, click Admin up in the menu bar:

Select Parent Report Templates from the menu:

The Parent Report Templates screen has two windows: on the left is the list of Template Files; on the right are the Placeholders, which are used to define what information from Insight will be displayed in your reports.

Let's start by downloading the existing Custom template. We can use that as the basis for our own report format. Click on the Custom template name, highlighted in blue text:

This will download a Word document, which you can open to view and amend:

Placeholders

All parent reports will consist of a combination of "static" pieces of information, which don't change from report to report (such as the report headings and your school logo), and "dynamic" pieces of information, which do change from report to report (such as a pupil's name).

In your template, the dynamic content is defined by placeholders. These are the elements contained by squiggly brackets, for example {First Name} and {Comment: Teacher Comment}. Think of placeholders in your templates as stand-ins for the pieces of information which will be different on each report. They allow you to draw information from Insight and determine where to put it on the page.

The default Custom template contains placeholders for name, class, termly assessments for reading, writing, and maths, and the teacher's comments. The preview below shows an example of a final report based on that template:

You can create placeholders from the Parent Report Templates page. Initially, you'll see a list of placeholders relating to Pupil Details - Name, Class, Year Group, Attendance, etc - which are likely to go at the top of your report. Click on the Display Placeholders for dropdown to see the other options:

You can generate placeholders for assessment and progress data, objectives, comment fields, and statutory assessments.

Assessments and Progress placeholders: these placeholders require you to enter some details in order to generate the placeholder element. Use the dropdowns on-screen to select the relevant assessments.

Comments placeholders: You can define different comment elements for your reports. Many will require a "Teacher Comment", so a placeholder for this exists by default. Press the Add Another button to create others. For example, you might want to record comments on pupils' achievements in individual subjects, list their targets for the coming year, or provide a field for a headteacher's comment. You don't have to use all comments in all reports.

Once you've found or configured the required placeholder, simply click the Copy icon button and paste it into your template. Insight will then know to include that data in the specified location on the report.

Creating a Bespoke Template

We could start with a blank Word file and copy and paste the required placeholders to build our template from scratch. In this case, we're going to modify the Custom template we downloaded above.

Adding Pupil information

First, let's add a table to the Word template with 2 rows and 2 columns and copy some placeholders into the cells of the table. In this example, we've added placeholders to show Name, Year, Class, and Attendance:

Adding additional assessment data

Let's add some more assessment data to our template. Again let's add a table, this time with 2 columns and 3 rows to contain some test results:

Return to the Parent Report Templates page in Insight to generate the placeholders, which will be pasted into the empty cells of the table. Click on the dropdown menu and select Assessments:

Now we can generate the placeholders we need to instruct Insight to add the test results to our report. In this example, we have created placeholders for Reading and Maths test scores and Reading age assessments for the Summer term:

Again, copy the placeholder to the template using the copy button. Our template now looks like this, with a table to show test results beneath the main table of teacher assessments:

Example: Adding effort grades

Insight is capable of storing any data in any format, and an assessment of effort is no exception. We can create a mark scheme to capture this information and once active, you can add it to your report template.

Many schools provide parents with effort grades alongside attainment data and if that information is stored in Insight, it can be automatically added to your reports. Assuming you are collecting such information, we can generate a placeholder for it. Return to the parent report admin area and select Assessments from the dropdown. Then generate the placeholder for effort grades:

These have been copied into a new table in the template:

The report will now display the pupil's effort grades for Reading, Writing, and Maths.

Adding additional comment fields to the report template

On the Parent Report Templates page select Comments from the placeholders dropdown menu. Here, we have added placeholders for two new comment fields: Targets and Headteacher's comment:

Again, copy the placeholder using the button provided and paste it into the desired position in the template.

You can continue adding placeholders to your template to display any other relevant information. Schools that track learning objectives may want to add that data to show pupils' achievement in key areas of the curriculum, and for those pupils that have taken national assessments (e.g. phonics, KS1 and KS2) there is a statutory responsibility to report the results to parents. Placeholders for objectives and statutory assessments can be generated by selecting the relevant option from the dropdown menu in the admin area.

Uploading your template

First, save your template, giving it a meaningful name so it can be easily identified by teachers when they are adding their comments to Insight. Once saved, we can upload it to Insight.

In the Parent Report Templates admin area, click the Upload New Report Template button, find your saved template and upload it:

You will now see a new template in the list on the left-hand side:

Report templates are shared across the whole school, so all staff can use them. With comment templates set up, your school is ready to enter comments and download reports.

Please contact the Insight support team if you need any help.