Academy operations
Progress report
Definition
A progress report is the monthly document a chess academy sends parents showing a student's evidence, narrative, and next step: attendance from the register, games and rating movement from synced Lichess or Chess.com history, an engine-checked evidence moment, three or four sentences of coach narrative, and one concrete focus for the coming month.
In practice
Progress report is the term academy owners and coaches use for the document a family receives once a month, distinct from the quicker parent update that might go out after a single class or a single tournament result. It draws on the same evidence a guardian portal displays to families and often carries a rating-sync figure alongside attendance, so the report and the portal should never disagree on a number. Academy owners run into the term when setting up a batch's reporting cadence, when training a new coach on what the software assembles versus what the coach writes, or when comparing coaching platforms on whether reports can be produced without an evening of manual writing. For the full anatomy of a report, why most academies stop sending them by month two, where every number should come from, and how an AI-drafted, human-approved workflow keeps the monthly cadence alive, read the linked guide below.