Report card

A typical report card uses a grading scale to determine the quality of a student's school work.

Traditional school report cards contained a section for teachers to record individual comments about the student's work and behavior.

In Serbia the role of report cards is widely fulfilled by svedočanstva ("testimonies"), in which all final (annual) grades throughout the entire level of education, as well as any negative or positive critique the student is given, and all of his other school institution-related accomplishments are kept.

In some secondary schools, students receive two report cards, one at the end of each grading period.

These reports allow students and their parents to see if school performance is slipping and if intervention is required to bring up the grade.

In 2010 the Government agency for ICT in education, BECTA, put in place a requirement for school report cards for all pupils in the comprehensive school system to have their reports made available to parents online (see also electronic grade book).

In elementary schools (grades 1–8), two separate report cards are used: The Elementary Progress Report, used between October 20 and November 20 of the school year, and the Elementary Provincial Report Card, used at the end of Term 1 (sent home between January 20 and February 20 of the academic year) and at the end of Term 2 (sent home toward the end of June of the school year).

Many private schools choose to use the provincial report card to maintain the standards set by Ontario's Ministry of Education.

The learning skill categories are Organization, Collaboration, Initiative, Independent Work, Self-Regulation, and Responsibility.

English, French, Mathematics and Art are further divided into Reading, Writing, Oral Communication and Media Literacy for English, Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing for Second Language, Number Sense and Numeration, Measurement, Geometry and Spatial Sense, Patterning and Algebra and Data Management and Probability for Mathematics, and Music, Visual Arts and Drama, and Dance for The Arts.

Page 4 details the marking scale used on the report card, with spaces for Parent Comments and Signatures and for students to plan goals for the future.

Many formal education systems also standardize the dimensions of their grades reports to be as long and wide as large index cards.