How Willowfolio writes your Local Authority report, and why you always get the last word

What does the auto-draft actually pull from?

You have been logging activities, and the app has been paying attention. When you open Reports, choose "Council" as the report type to generate your Local Authority report (called the Council Report inside Willowfolio, because most parents say "council"), pick a child and a date range, and the app reads everything you have logged in that window and builds a narrative.

Three things feed the draft:

• Your activity logs. Every piece of work (the Montessori term for a self-chosen activity) you have recorded in the date range. The app groups these by Montessori area and then maps each area to the corresponding National Curriculum subject using the crosswalk (an internal lookup table that translates Montessori categories into the subject headings an LA officer expects to see).
• Your observation fields. If you have recorded concentration (sustained, absorbed attention on a self-chosen piece of work, often a developmental marker), engagement state (a quick read on how absorbed the child was: high, medium or low) or whether the work was freely chosen (selected by the child independently, not assigned by you), the narrative draws on these too. It might note that "every piece of work was freely chosen" if that holds across the date range, or describe a sustained work cycle (an uninterrupted span where a child chooses and returns materials at their own rhythm, typically 2 to 3 hours) if the data supports it.
• The crosswalk mapping. Each Montessori area has a National Curriculum equivalent. Practical Life maps to PSHE and Design Technology, among other subjects. Sensorial maps to Science, among other subjects. The crosswalk is not a perfect mirror, and it does not need to be. Its job is to give the narrative a structure that reads naturally to a non-specialist LA officer.

The result is a section-by-section draft organised by curriculum area, with Montessori vocabulary where your logs support it and National Curriculum framing where the LA expects it.

Why does the narrative use Montessori language?

The generator uses the terms your logs already contain. If you logged "Pink Tower (a classic Montessori sensorial material, a graded set of pink cubes), freely chosen, high concentration, 25 minutes", the narrative might describe a sustained piece of work within the Sensorial area, note the child's concentration, and map it to Science for the LA's benefit.

This is deliberate. A well-written Montessori account reads clearly to a non-specialist reader when it carries enough concrete detail. An LA officer does not need to know what a Pink Tower is if the report explains what the child was doing, for how long, and what curriculum area it touches. The auto-draft aims for that balance.

If the Montessori phrasing does not feel like your voice, change it. Every paragraph is editable. You might prefer "she spent twenty-five minutes working carefully with the tower blocks, ordering them by size" to "a sustained piece of work with the Pink Tower". Both are accurate. The version that sounds like you is the one to send.

What can I edit in my council report before finalising?

Everything. Every section of the auto-drafted narrative is editable. You can:

• Rewrite a paragraph entirely in your own words.
• Add detail the app could not see, such as a conversation you had, a trip you took, or a book that sparked a new interest.
• Soften the tone if the draft reads too formal or too clinical.
• Remove a section that does not feel relevant.
• Correct a crosswalk mapping that put an activity under the wrong subject heading.

Before you finalise, the app shows you exactly what the LA will receive. Nothing is sent, exported, or locked until you click "finalise". If your circumstances make it difficult to sit and review in one go, the draft saves automatically. Come back to it tomorrow if you need to.

You are not staring at a blank page at ten o'clock on a Sunday night. The draft is scaffolding. Your voice is the building.

A worked example

Marie lives in Newcastle with her two children, aged six and nine. She is a single mum and has been homeschooling for two years. Her LA has written to ask for an annual update on each child's education.

She opens Reports, taps "New Report", picks "Council" as the type, selects her six-year-old, and sets the date range to the past twelve months. The app generates a draft in about thirty seconds. The draft has five sections: English, Mathematics, Science, Humanities, and a general "approach and philosophy" paragraph at the top. Each section cites specific pieces of work from her logs, notes where her daughter showed sustained concentration, and mentions that most of the recorded work was freely chosen.

Marie reads through it. The English section is solid, but she wants to add a paragraph about the chapter books her daughter has been reading aloud at bedtime. The Science section mentions "the Sensorial area" in a way that might confuse her LA officer, so she rewrites it: "She has been exploring magnetism, buoyancy and plant growth through hands-on experiments at home and in the garden." She also softens the opening paragraph, which sounded a bit formal, by adding a sentence about how their week usually looks. The whole review takes about twenty minutes. She finalises, downloads the PDF, and emails it to her LA contact. Done.

For her nine-year-old, she repeats the process. This draft is thinner because she logged less consistently for the autumn term. She fills in the gaps by hand, drawing on her own memory and a few photos on her phone. It takes a bit longer, but the scaffolding still saves her from starting with nothing.