How to keep useful notes for school and GP meetings

A useful record is not a diary of everything your child does. It is a short, dated account created for a particular question: what makes mornings different, whether a new classroom support helps, why homework is taking so long, or what information the GP needs before an appointment.

Keeping the purpose narrow makes the record easier to maintain and easier for somebody else to understand.

Give the record a question and an end date

Write the question at the top. For example:

• What happens on days when my child cannot enter school?
• Does written rather than spoken homework information change what they can complete?
• When does stomach pain occur, and what else is happening at the time?
• What happens after the new lunchtime arrangement is used?

Choose a period that is long enough to include ordinary variation but short enough to be realistic. Two school weeks may answer one question; another may need a month. Add a date to stop and review. You can extend it if needed, but you do not have to record family life indefinitely.

Use a small set of fields

For each relevant event, note:

1. Date and time. Include the lesson, journey or part of the routine if that matters.
2. Situation. Say what was happening and what was being asked.
3. Observation. Record what you directly saw or heard without adding a cause.
4. Access and impact. What could your child start, continue, finish or recover from? What part of ordinary life was affected?
5. What happened next. Include how long the difficulty continued and how it ended.
6. Support or change. Note what was offered and whether it appeared to help, had no clear effect or was not used.
7. Source. Mark whether the information came from you, your child, a teacher, a message or somebody else.

One or two sentences can cover these points. A long account is not automatically more accurate.

Keep observation and explanation separate

“He was overwhelmed by noise” may be a reasonable possibility, but it combines an event with an explanation. The record becomes clearer when you write:

14 September, lunchtime. Teacher emailed to say J covered his ears, left the dining hall before eating and sat in the corridor for ten minutes. He returned when the hall was quieter. Source: teacher email.

You can add a separate note: “Noise or crowding may be relevant; ask J and school.” That shows what is known and what still needs checking.

Avoid using “trigger” as though the event immediately before proves a cause. A request may be the last visible part of a longer day. Record the wider context when you know it, including sleep, pain, illness, timetable changes, missed food, social events or support that was unavailable.

Include the occasions that went differently

If you record only the hardest moments, you cannot compare them with the days on which the same task was manageable. Note easier occasions and what differed.

Perhaps the room was quieter, an instruction was written down, a familiar adult was present or the task started earlier. Perhaps nothing obvious changed. Both results are useful. They prevent the record from claiming a pattern that is not there and help the meeting ask better questions.

Record your child’s account with care

Tell your child what you are recording in a way they can understand. Ask what they want included and who may see it. A child might dictate a sentence, draw the difficult part of the day, rate an experience using their own scale or choose not to answer at that moment.

Use quotation marks only for words you recorded accurately. If you are recalling the general meaning later, write that it is your summary.

Do not put a private disclosure into a widely shared document only because it is relevant to school. If the disclosure indicates abuse, exploitation or immediate danger, follow the appropriate safeguarding route. If it is personal but not a safety matter, agree with the child what needs to be shared and why.

Keep accounts from different settings distinct

School and home may report different events. Put both in the record without merging them into one explanation.

The difference itself is information. It does not prove masking, deliberate behaviour, poor parenting or an inaccurate school report.

Turn the log into a meeting summary

The full log is your working record. Most meetings need a short summary.

Use one page with:

• the question you investigated;
• the period covered and number of relevant entries;
• the pattern you can see, including variation;
• two or three dated examples;
• what your child says;
• what has been tried and what happened;
• what you want the school, GP or service to help clarify;
• any documents attached.

Do not imply that the record proves a diagnosis or entitles the child to one particular outcome. It supplies observations that can be compared with other information.

In England, the SEND Code says assessment for SEN should draw on teachers’ information, the pupil’s view, parents’ experience and relevant advice from other services. It also says parental concerns should be recorded and compared with the school’s assessment ^[1]. Your record is one part of that wider picture.

Store and share it deliberately

A log may contain health information, school details, names and a child’s private words. Keep it somewhere other household members cannot browse casually. Check recipients before sending it, and share the short relevant section rather than the entire record where that is enough.

If a school or health service needs the full document, ask how it will be stored and who will see it. Keep your own copy of anything you send.

Keep the record separate from the request

Your log holds observations. Your covering message tells the recipient what you want them to do with those observations.

For school, that request might be:

Please could the SENCO compare these two weeks of lunch information with staff observations and agree whether a different entry arrangement should be tested?

For the GP, it might be:

These notes show when the stomach pain occurs, what my child reports and the effect on eating and attendance. Please could we discuss which health causes need assessment and what school information would be useful?

Do not expect the reader to infer the question from a spreadsheet. Put it in the first paragraph and name any urgent concern separately.

After the meeting, add the decision, action owner and review date to a short follow-up note. Do not rewrite old entries to match the new explanation. The original record shows what was known at the time; the later note shows what adults decided from it.

The School Navigator Pack turns these notes into meeting questions and actions. For a health appointment, the GP and NHS Prep Pack uses the same factual approach in a shorter clinical summary.

Sources

1. Department for Education and Department of Health and Social Care, SEND code of practice: 0 to 25 years