Understanding Luxembourgish report cards

When children are in primary school, even as early as kindergarten, parents are called to attend a parent-teacher meeting after every trimester, and then again after the child has passed a 'cycle'. These meetings are meant to update parents on their child’s education progress and to ensure communication with the teacher.

In primary school 

A report card, known as 'Bilan intermédiaire' after every trimester and 'Bilan fin de cycle' after the end of a school year, documents a pupil's academic performance. The report, sometimes called an achievement or progress report, tracking the latter, is given to the pupil and their parents once to four times a year.

A typical bilan also has its own grading system, which is normed for every primary school in Luxembourg, to make sure that in the event that a pupil switches schools, their progress will be understood easily. In the same fashion, once the parents have been familiarised with the grading parameters, they can understand any type of report.

The ebook on “Niveaux de compétences” explains the levels a child should have achieved at the end of each trimester or cycle.

Primarily, report cards are important for parents to see how their child is doing at school, where they have issues, how fast they are developing skills and how the child interacts in class.

Even if the child is still young, such as in kindergarten, the teacher puts together a sort of portfolio which showcases the pupil’s productions: cut-outs, paintings, colouring book, etc.

In kindergarten the teacher will also playfully test the children’s knowledge on detecting which colour is which, they determine how well they write (most children can write their own names), if the child can stay inside the lines while colouring, or if they can follow a designated line to cut out something.

It shows that even though one might think kindergarten is for playing (considering the Luxembourgish name for it is ‘Spillschoul’, which means play school), the teacher already pays a lot of attention to practical matters, to speech development and to the understanding of guidelines as well. Lastly, the portfolio is just as valuable to the child, because they can look back on everything they have achieved and created.

After cycle 1, the report card becomes a bit more complicated, or rather more elaborate: since new subjects are added, for instance German, French, and coding, there are naturally more parameters to grade.

In languages the parameters that determine a pupil’s level are speaking, reading, writing and understanding (which also applies to Luxembourgish if it is a Luxembourgish school). In mathematics, the teacher judges the pupil’s spacial awareness (e.g in geometry), their numeric space, calculation skills and their ability to use units (such as cm, €, litre).

In areas like coding, it is spacial awareness that is tested due to most tasks ask a child to connect point A to point B, which they then have to calculate in a manner that is playful to them, yet actually determines how they position themselves in spaces.

The performance is graded from A to D, A* being the highest score, parameters such as interaction in class are graded by four columns, and progress is tracked via a vertical line.

You can find an empty 'Bilan' on the Ministry of Education, Children and Youth's website. The bilans exist in French, German, Croatian, Ukrainian, English, Portuguese and are nowadays distributed electronically.

However, the report doesn't only look at the academic performance in different subjects: the teacher also looks at the pupil’s behaviour, how they interact with or treat other kids in class, if they take care of their school material, whether they take initiatives and work autonomously, how quick they are and how well they incorporate learning strategies. If a child has serious issues, be it at social or academic level, the parents are called immediately.

Every teacher should focus on the positive sides before highlighting what the pupil can still improve on. In case there are difficulties, the teacher is supposed to counter those with possible solutions. There is only possibility for progress, not regress!

Thus, in primary school, parents are obliged to attend the report meetings at the end of each trimester, but that changes in secondary school: How important are grades and parameters such as interaction when students hit high school?

Progress reports in secondary school 

The relationship between teachers and parents is bound to change when children hit puberty and move on to secondary school. Nevertheless, that change does not happen immediately: from grades 7e to 5e, parents are still allowed to have their children’s report cards explained by the main teacher of the pupil, entitled 'régent', responsible for the class.

Since the shift to secondary school can seem daunting and confusing for parents who have not experienced it before, with new marking methods out of 60 and semesters, these one-on-one explanatory sessions after a semester are very useful.

You can also find a guide to secondary school on men.lu, and on page 10 the grading system is explained. However, attending a meeting is not mandatory. If parents feel they've seen enough report cards, they are not required to sign up for a meeting.

As in primary school, communication is one of the key points in education. The majority of parents appreciate the opportunity, since they are used to keeping up a professional relationship with the teachers from primary school. Once again, the main teacher focusses on highlighting the student’s strengths and talents, alongside evaluating their behaviour, their marks, and their interaction in class.

Considering that there are no extra diagrams or columns on report in high school, the understanding of it all is more straight-forward: marks under 30 are a fail, marks over 40 qualify as a 'good' ('bien') for example.

Parent-conferences also still happen in the early grades of high school, though these are more focussed on the class as a whole, the teacher doesn't look at each pupil’s issues individually. When it comes to choosing a specialisation in high school, the parent-teacher conferences will focus more on which future steps to take, such as finding out what their children are good at and passionate about.

As mentioned earlier, communication is key. If parents feel the need to discuss a specific issue with a teacher, they can always reach out and request an individual meeting. While it may seem that there is more distance between teachers and parents in secondary school, teachers are still approachable and open to dialogue.

The role of a teacher includes engaging with parents to address any issues that arise and to work together on finding solutions, rather than avoiding dialogue. Communication should be a two-way process. If a teacher suspects that a student isn't showing their tests to be signed at home, or isn't discussing school with their parents, the teacher can reach out to provide an update on the student's progress.

Additionally, contact points such as SEPAS, the Psychosocial and Scholastic Assistance Service, and some kind of Service de l'Orientation exist in all high schools,  and are happy to help in situations of need.