ACT Education Minister Joy Burch has announced a six-week public consultation period on a new report card policy and templates, which will include standardised scores for kindergarten students, specific A to E gradings and teacher comments written in "plain English".

Ms Burch said her contact with parents of students of all ages had led her to understand how much they wanted clear and simple feedback.

"I believe parents want consistency across the system, no matter what year level their child is at."

"And I think plain English is always preferable in any circumstance. We want parents to have a deeper understanding of their child's learning so they can engage with their child and school."

The public consultation was seeking "feedback on how policies and templates for student reporting can ensure parents and carers receive consistent information about their child's achievement from preschool to year 12," Ms Burch said.

The new Reporting Student Achievement (Preschool to Year 12) Policy would also reflect the use of nationally agreed Australian Curriculum Achievement Standards. But there was also room to adapt new reporting standards to reflect the information parents wanted about their child's learning, and in what form, Ms Burch said.

"This is not to say there are flaws in the existing model, this is about raising the bar."

The new policy would require schools to inform parents of their reporting policies when a child enrolled.

It proposes that in kindergarten, in addition to school reports, parents will be provided with a report of their child's achievement in the Performance Indicators in Primary Schools assessment at the beginning and end of the year.

A student's achievement would be reported as a standardised score, and also relative to the achievement of all other kindergarten students in ACT government schools, using five performance bands.

Ms Burch said that the foundation years of Kindergarten were vital in providing parental feedback on how a child was grasping basic skills.

The end-of-year report would also show the progress made by the student during the year in the areas assessed.

The policy clearly states that schools will be required to "Use plain English" when preparing reports and to categorise performance with A to E gradings.

In years 1-10, an A would require "outstanding achievement", a B "high achievement", a C "sound achievement", a D "limited achievement' while an E would signify "very limited achievement".

These bands change slightly in years 11 and 12 where an A would require "a very high level of knowledge and understanding of the full range of concepts and principles of the unit", a B "a high level of knowledge and understanding", a C "a sound level of knowledge and understanding", a D "a limited knowledge and understanding" and an E "very limited knowledge and understanding".

The Australian Education Union said it would consider the new policy once the results of the public consultation were clear.

The six-week public consultation on the draft policy and draft report templates will start this week and close on 15 May. It includes an online survey. Ms Burch said she expected parents would be quite interested in taking part and having their views known.

Last October, Ms Burch announced students completing the ACT's year 10 certificate would receive grades on an A to E scale for the first time.

The move to traditional grades connected the ACT year 10 certificate to nationally recognised standards as part of the implementation of the national curriculum.
It meant school-based descriptions of achievements are no longer used and follows the extension of A to E gradings for all students from kindergarten to year 9 in 2013.

Ms Burch said parents and schools all needed to be on the same page regarding educational attainment and the ACT government system would adhere to consistency from kindergarten to year 12 once the policy was implemented.

In the meantime, she said the Education Directorate would be keen to assist independent and Catholic schools to attain the same level of consistency in school reporting across the non-government sector.