If Formbyman spent as much time on learning as he does on trying to make his classmates laugh, he would be top of the class.

Apparently its proverbial in the Army that one RHA trainee going through Sandhurst was marked as following - "I would not breed from this officer".

"You won't get on in life learning the lyrics of David Bowie"

or

Geography report - " Lucky if he finds his way home"!

A comment from an English teacher. I was chuffed. I was in the 5th form at the time.

Not so much for bad content, but I did get the following...

"AlinCumbria it looks as if a spider has crawled all over your work and then been violently sick in the middle"

...lucky I wasn't a sensitive soul!

I was very naughty at school. Well, very lazy, quite often absent and sometimes intoxicated one way or another. I don't remember many of my reports, but between the first and fifth forms they were almost universally bad, except in English and Music.

The most memorable thing was by a teacher - my sainted, late housemaster, John Eminson - who was one of my few defenders. He wrote to my parents once, and described me in the letter as "wandering distractedly about the school with the air of an amused, but lost, professor". I loved that.

But 2 (allegedly true) comments on someones service documents while serving in the Royal Navy.

"This man is depriving a village of a perfectly good idiot"

"This person sets himself abysmally low personal standards, & consistently fails to achieve them"

Never recorded , but my favourite insult aregarding someones intelligence was an old & bold Chief tiff from back in the day

"He is as thick as a Gurkhas foreskin"

The damning
'Satisfactory' (I can't remember what for)

and for P.E. 'rather weak and a little timid'

usually ended with the words, "...but he always tries hard."

I think not.

Unless it meant 'trying hard at standing still and daydreaming about Miss Hailey, while spherical objects flew past.'

Who was incredibly confident but thunderingly delusional re her own abilities was told in her appraisal that she needed to be "better informed" because events and developments re clients would pass her by - they would tell her important things and she would not take it in, let alone tell anyone else. So she made a point of allowing 30 minutes every morning to read The Times at her desk, cover to cover. Why? Because the paper's slogan at the time was "Be Better Informed".

where the lecturer had put a huge red cross through an entire sheet of A4 paper, with the words "PURE FANTASY" scrawled in red pen across the middle.

...throughout all my school reports. Nonsense, I was doing just enough to stay in the top stream, it was all about pacing oneself.

I got 2% in an accountancy exam at University, after handing in a blank sheet of paper with my name on it. Two other people had neglected their names, thus achieving 0%.

after I had set laboratory gas taps on fire in the fourth form O'level class.

"there is no hope for you"

I got a history degree and have worked for the govt for 20 years. So he was dead right after all.

My fourth-form English teacher wrote just three words on my report that year: "Lazy and conceited".

To be fair, he was right.

In my carefree and all knowing youth a teacher retorted to one of my asides

"RichieRichie, sarcasm is the lowest form of whit"

and on another occasion after a trying day (for him),

"If whit were shit you`d be constipated"

Oh how we laughed, by the way the teacher was brillant and respected by everyone including me.

I have a school report from when I was 9 which reads,

Gatz is a bright boy who is capable of good work. He has a keen, dry sense of humour which occaisionally gets the better of him.

To this day no one has ever summed me up so well in so few words.

George Harrison was a very, let's say, reluctant student at the Liverpool Institute. Apparently one of his reports read something like: I'd like to comment on the student's work but he hasn't done any.

"He has projected an image which he finds interesting but many others find aggravating...I do not intend him roaming the streets of the town looking at record shops any longer. He had better find an interest before he returns".

The "aggravating image", by the way, was a black shirt (C&A), black jeans (Millets), and a blonde quiff (L'Oreal), usually accompanied by a distant gaze (my own, but inspired by New Order).

I'm now 41, wearing a black shirt and on The Word website at nearly 10pm on a Wednesday night. Is this progress?

stated, "Sir Tainley has handed in only one of five essays required for this semster. I wonder if there is a problem."

Barrie Abercrombie, my old 'A' Level physics lecturer, described me to my parents as "An intellectual yobbo"

Which I was quite chuffed with.

The best thing ever written by a teacher was by Mr Thomas, our beardy, odd, 3rd year English teacher. At the bottom of an essay: "Your writing is very oimfy. 6/10"

I read this. It made no sense. My friends read it. They couldn't understand it either.

I put up a hesitant hand.

"Mr Thomas, sir. What does "oimfy" mean?"

"I have no idea, Law. Why do you ask?"

"Well.. You've written it here, sir.."

Mr Thomas comes over and checks.

"IT SAYS "SCRUFFY", LAW! STOP BEING SO IMPUDENT!"

The detention was worth it. As was the complaint my parents made to the head of department. And the written apology to them. In very bloody oimfy handwriting.

He wouldn't have lasted five minutes these days.

The one that had me struggling to keep a straight face at the end of year calibration was:
"When XXX stands up to speak to our members, my sphincter tightens."
And "No-one can question his work ethic. YZYZY has done more late nights than leno this year"

but I was useless at chemistry. One day, the teacher asked me to get a bottle of hydrochloric acid from the back of the lab as he needed it for an experiment he was demonstrating. I duly trotted off, chuffed to pieces I could work out that I was looking for a bottle with "HCl" printed on it. However, there weren't any: we had H2SO4 in abundance, a few others but no HCl. I duly reported back.

Mr. Godfrey looked at me in disdain. "Mark JF doesn't know the chemical symbol for hydrochloric acid," he announced to the class. With that, he took me by the hand and led me to the back of the lab. Very patronisingly, he suggested I look for some HCl. "There isn't any," I said.

He looked around himself and sure enough there wasn't any. To his immense great credit, Mr. Godfrey turned around to the class and now announced: "Mark JF is right. There isn't any HCl and I've been quite wrong." He then made me lead him - by the hand - back to the front of the class. Fair do's.

Mind you, I think it was also him who put in one of my reports: "Unlikely to set the world on fire, unless by accident."

The teacher held my essay up before the class. "This is an excellent piece of writing, full of rhetorical flourishes, insight, wit and sparkling prose," he said. "I had to read it twice before I realised Underpants has made no attempt to answer the question, read any background material, or indeed pay attention at any point in the last two years."

I'd never been so proud of anything in my life.

I was a disaster at school, which I attended with the attitude that I could drift through it like Teflon man without anything sticking to me. I got into the 6th form with the absolute minimum required number of O levels, then failed A levels completely. My reports pretty universally were of the "could do well if only he would try" variety. I attribute at least some of the blame to the school's inability to make even the most interesting subjects, err, interesting. But most of the blame is mine. I then resat them and got two decent passes and went off to poly where I partied too hard in the first year and was facing being chucked out if I didn't pass a resit of maths and stats. I'd set the course failure record of 0% even having answered 3 questions. I hit the books over the summer holiday and then set the course record for a resit pass with 62%. At this point I think I finally woke up to the reality that work had to be done to get any qualifications. So I applied myself and got a decent degree. But I digress - my favourite two school report items were given to mates of mine:

"Despite his lack of knowledge he remains supremely confident" (last report before A level)
"He appears to have too many irons in the fire - indeed, he has too many fires" (my mate who had two jobs and played in two bands during A level).

I used to dread school report day. Not that I was stupid, but I found it hard to get on with anything that didn't engage me, like maths and just didn't bother with it. And, according to all reports, I was far too busy trying to make the class laugh most of the time. Thank God I was good at English. That's stood me in good stead.

That said, a horrible boss I had many years ago sent some copy back to me with 'THIS IS SHIT!!!!' scrawled across it. Nice. I think he was having a breakdown. I did learn a lot from him, though not about management style.

One of my wife's school reports has the hilarious line regarding her lack of enthusiasm for PE: 'Mrs F-C has had the longest period in the history of womankind'.

Not a report - slightly more damning in fact. One of my mum's favourite tales was when she took me to a doctor when I was 3 or 4 and the verdict came back that, because I couldn't draw a stick man at that age, I was likely to be 'seriously retarded'.

I'm still not so good at stick men, but I like to think I have made up for this in other ways. (Though I still get feedback about my writing looking like a drunken spider staggering from an inkwell)

Comment from nice Mr Edwards:
"This is clearly the work of someone possessed by demons!"

(*glow of pride*)

"Always remembers his kit."

I had this one on almost all my P.E. reports. It really was the best thing they could say about me.

I can't say much good about them either though, in my 5 years of school P.E. it didn't occur to any of my teachers that my consistent breathlessness may have been due to asthma! (I only found out I had this when I was 16.)