Are these real students?

No. Both are specimens written to show the format, and they are marked as samples on the page. We will not publish a real child's errors online, anonymised or otherwise — a parent's report is written for that parent, and turning it into marketing would be a misuse of it.

Who gets a progress report?

Every student, on every plan, at the end of each month. It is written by the tutor who actually taught the sessions, not generated from attendance data, which is why it can tell you that your son names letters silently to himself before long words.

Why are there no grades or percentages?

Because they would be invented precision. There is no scale on which a child's daad is 72 per cent correct. Every line in these reports is either something that happened, something the tutor observed, or something specific to do next — and if a line could not survive you asking "says who?", it should not be in there.

Why does the report say what is going wrong?

Because a report with no bad news is not a report. If the only thing you ever hear is that everything is going well, you have no way of telling a child who is progressing from one who is being kept quiet, and you will find out which at some point in year three.

Can I ask for something specific to be covered in the report?

Yes. If you want the tutor to track one particular thing — a letter, a surah, whether your daughter is actually speaking during the lesson — tell them and it will be in there next month.

What if I disagree with what the report says?

Say so. The tutor hears thirty minutes a week and you see the other six days, and where those two disagree it is usually the report that is missing something rather than you.

WHAT YOU GET

What a Monthly Progress Report Looks Like

The hardest thing about paying somebody to teach your child the Quran is that you cannot hear what is wrong. That is the entire reason you are paying somebody who can — and it also means you have no way of checking whether it is working.

So here is the document, in full. Two samples: a seven-year-old two months into the Qaida, and an adult fourteen months into Hifz. Neither is a real student and both are marked as samples, but the format is exactly what arrives at the end of each month.

Why this exists

“He’s doing well, mashaAllah” is not information

Ask most Quran teachers how a child is getting on and that is the answer you will get. It is kindly meant and it tells you nothing. It does not tell you whether he can read a joined word without naming the letters first, whether his qaf has been corrected, or whether the reason he reached page 21 slowly is a problem or exactly what should have happened.

A report that only contains good news has the same problem. If every month says everything is fine, you cannot distinguish a child who is progressing from a child nobody is listening to closely — and you will find out which of those it was somewhere in year three, when the pronunciation is set and fixing it means going backwards.

So every report here has a section headed what is not right yet. It is the section worth reading first.

SAMPLEMONTHLY PROGRESS REPORT

A seven-year-old, two months into Noorani Qaida

The most common report we write. The parent cannot hear what is wrong — that is the whole reason they are paying somebody who can.

STUDENT: Yusuf, age 7
COURSE: Noorani Qaida
TUTOR: Ustadha A. — Ijazah, Hafs an Asim
PERIOD: 1 – 30 September
SESSIONS: 12 held, 1 rescheduled, 0 missed

What we covered

Qaida pages 14 to 21 — the joined forms of ب ت ث ن ي in all positions.
Harakat on joined words: fatha, kasra and damma read without being named first.
Sukoon introduced on pages 22 to 23. Started, deliberately not finished.

What improved

Reads a line of three-letter joined words without stopping to name each letter. In August this needed prompting on almost every word.
Sits through the full thirty minutes. In July he was asking to stop at around eighteen.
Volunteers a correction when he hears himself go wrong, which is new and worth more than it sounds — it means he is listening to himself rather than to me.

Errors we are working on

What	Where it stands
ق as a plain k	ResolvedCorrected in week two and has stayed corrected since.
ع at the start of a word	ImprovingRight when he is thinking about it, slips when reading at speed.
ض and د merged	Still workingStill producing the same sound for both. This is October's main focus.
Rushing the last word of a line	ImprovingBetter since we started stopping at the end of each line on purpose.

What is not right yet

His reading speed rises with his confidence and his pronunciation falls with it. We are deliberately slowing him down rather than pushing for more pages.
He still names letters silently to himself before sounding out any word of four letters or more. Normal at this stage, but it is why page 21 took three sessions.

Next month’s goal

Finish sukoon, pages 22 to 26, and get ض consistent in isolation before we ask for it inside words. We expect page 26 by the end of October and not further — the pace is set by the ض, not by the page count.

What to do at home

Two minutes a day, not twenty. Ask him to read one line aloud from page 18, which he can already do well. Confidence is the thing in shortest supply at this stage.
Do not correct his ض yourself unless you are confident of the sound. Two different versions of a correction are harder for a child than one.
If he resists a session, tell us rather than pushing through it. We would rather move the slot than have him associate the lesson with an argument.

FROM THE TUTOR

A good month. The thing I would not want lost in the detail above is that he is enjoying it, which at seven is the only durable predictor of where he will be at twelve.

SAMPLEMONTHLY PROGRESS REPORT

An adult, fourteen months into Hifz, working full time

A different document, because the thing that goes wrong for an adult is not pronunciation. It is revision quietly falling behind while new memorization looks fine.

STUDENT: Bilal, adult
COURSE: Hifz
TUTOR: Qari M. — Ijazah, Hafs an Asim
PERIOD: 1 – 30 September
SESSIONS: 13 held, 2 rescheduled

What we covered

Sabaq: Surah Al-Mulk completed, and Surah Al-Qalam to the end of ayah 33. About four pages of new memorization.
Sabaqi: the previous seven days recited at the start of every session. No gaps this month.
Manzil: Juz 30 cycled twice in full.

What improved

Manzil is actually being done. In August it was skipped on eleven days out of thirty-one; in September, three.
Recall under interruption is better — stopping him mid-ayah and asking him to resume from a different point no longer derails the passage.

Errors we are working on

What	Where it stands
Madd lengths shorten under pressure	ImprovingFine at a slow pace, cut short when reciting from memory at speed.
Similar ayah endings in Al-Qalam	Still workingJumping between ayat with matching endings. Expected in this surah; needs dedicated work.
Stopping at non-waqf points	ImprovingBreaking mid-phrase when unsure of the next word rather than pausing properly.
Ghunnah too short on idgham	ResolvedCorrected in July and has held.

What is not right yet

Daily revision is now around 35 minutes and it will keep growing. At this pace it reaches an hour by next summer. That is worth planning for now rather than discovering in June.
Both rescheduled sessions this month were manzil days. Not a problem once, but manzil is the part that decays silently, and it is always the first thing to be moved.
An-Naba and Al-Mursalat are measurably weaker than the rest of Juz 30 and have been for two months.

Next month’s goal

Finish Al-Qalam and hold the current pace rather than raising it. The honest constraint now is manzil time, not memorization capacity, and adding new pages would buy progress on paper at the cost of the pages already learned.

What to do at home

Record yourself reciting An-Naba once a week and listen back. It is the fastest way to catch the ayah-ending confusions, because you cannot hear them while reciting.
Move manzil to the morning. All three skipped days were evening attempts after a full day of work.
Run your pace through the timeline calculator at six days a week rather than seven. It moves the finish date less than you would expect, and it is far more likely to be the plan you actually keep.

FROM THE TUTOR

Fourteen months in is where most adults stop, and the reason is almost always the revision pile rather than motivation. He has got on top of manzil this month, which is the single best sign in this report.

What is not in it

Three things you will not find in these reports

Grades, scores or percentages

There is no scale on which a child’s daad is 72 per cent correct. A number would feel more rigorous than the sentence it replaced and mean considerably less, and it would invite comparison between two children whose situations have nothing in common.

Charts of attendance dressed up as progress

Turning up is not learning. Attendance is in the header because you should know about a missed session, but a graph of it is a picture of our scheduling rather than of your child, and the page count is there for the same reason — as context for the errors, not as the achievement.

Anything the tutor did not observe

Each line is something that happened in a session. A tutor who hears thirty minutes a week cannot tell you how motivated your child is in general, and a report that claimed to would be writing fiction that happens to be flattering.

How it works

Who writes it, and when

The tutor who taught the sessions writes it, at the end of each calendar month, for every student on every plan. It is not generated from attendance records, which is why it can tell you that your son names letters silently to himself before long words — nothing in a database knows that.

If you want something specific tracked, ask. If you disagree with what it says, say so: the tutor sees thirty minutes a week and you see the other six days, and where those disagree it is usually the report that is missing something.

You can also watch any lesson yourself, which is the unedited version of all of this and costs nothing. The report exists because most parents cannot sit in three times a week, not as a replacement for being able to.

Questions

About the reports

Are these real students?: No. Both are specimens written to show the format, and they are marked as samples on the page. We will not publish a real child's errors online, anonymised or otherwise — a parent's report is written for that parent, and turning it into marketing would be a misuse of it.
Who gets a progress report?: Every student, on every plan, at the end of each month. It is written by the tutor who actually taught the sessions, not generated from attendance data, which is why it can tell you that your son names letters silently to himself before long words.
Why are there no grades or percentages?: Because they would be invented precision. There is no scale on which a child's daad is 72 per cent correct. Every line in these reports is either something that happened, something the tutor observed, or something specific to do next — and if a line could not survive you asking "says who?", it should not be in there.
Why does the report say what is going wrong?: Because a report with no bad news is not a report. If the only thing you ever hear is that everything is going well, you have no way of telling a child who is progressing from one who is being kept quiet, and you will find out which at some point in year three.
Can I ask for something specific to be covered in the report?: Yes. If you want the tutor to track one particular thing — a letter, a surah, whether your daughter is actually speaking during the lesson — tell them and it will be in there next month.
What if I disagree with what the report says?: Say so. The tutor hears thirty minutes a week and you see the other six days, and where those two disagree it is usually the report that is missing something rather than you.

Where to go next

Classes for kids ›Hifz for adults ›Signs a teacher is not working out ›Start a free trial ›