The seven reports a head teacher should print every Monday

The best-run schools we have visited share a habit: the head teacher starts Monday with a small stack of printed reports. Not a thick file — seven pages, sometimes fewer. But those pages contain the information needed to make every significant decision that week before it becomes urgent.

Here is what those seven reports are, and why each one earns its place.

1. Attendance summary by class

A single page showing each class, the number of students enrolled, and the attendance percentage for the previous week. Any class below 85% gets a conversation with the class teacher before Tuesday. Patterns — the same class low every Monday, for example — often point to something worth investigating.

2. Outstanding fee balances by class

Not a full ledger — just a summary. How many students in each class have an outstanding balance above a threshold you set? This tells the bursar where to focus collection efforts for the week and gives the head teacher a sense of the school's cash position without reading every account.

3. Staff attendance for the previous week

Which teachers were absent, and how many days? A teacher absent twice in one week may need a conversation. A pattern of Monday absences across multiple staff members is a different kind of signal. This report takes thirty seconds to read and prevents small problems from becoming large ones.

4. Upcoming events and deadlines this week

A simple list: what is happening this week that requires preparation? Parent-teacher meetings, external exams, fee deadlines, inspection visits, sports fixtures. This is not a surprise list — it is a confirmation that everything on the calendar has been prepared for. If something on the list has no owner, Monday morning is the right time to assign one.

5. New admissions and withdrawals since last Monday

How many students joined? How many left? This keeps the head teacher's mental model of enrolment current without requiring a full admissions review. A sudden spike in withdrawals is worth understanding. A strong week of new admissions is worth noting for the end-of-term report.

6. Pending result entries (mid-term or end of term)

During assessment periods, this report shows which teachers have not yet entered scores for their subjects. It is not a disciplinary tool — it is a visibility tool. The head teacher can see at a glance whether the school is on track to produce results on time, and can offer support to teachers who are behind rather than discovering the problem on the last day.

7. Maintenance and facilities log

What was reported broken last week? What was fixed? What is still outstanding? A leaking roof reported in week two that appears on the Monday report every week until week eight is a management failure, not a facilities failure. This report makes deferred maintenance visible.

The discipline of the routine

The value of these seven reports is not in any individual piece of information. It is in the habit of looking at the same information every week, in the same format, so that changes are immediately visible. A head teacher who reads these reports every Monday for a full term develops an intuition for what is normal at their school — and that intuition is what allows them to catch problems early.

The reports should take no more than twenty minutes to review. If they are taking longer, the format needs simplifying. The goal is a quick scan that surfaces anything requiring action, not a deep analysis session.

Set aside Monday morning for this. Protect it from meetings. The rest of the week runs better when it starts with clarity.