One or two students at the Upper Grand District School Board (UGDSB) may be breathing a sigh of relief — the board is announcing that they will be limiting who gets a report card this winter.

The move comes after months of work-to-rule job action from teacher and education worker unions. As part of that job action, teachers are restricting the kind of feedback they give to parents.

For instance, while teachers represented by the Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario are still recording grades, they aren't entering them electronically, said Heather Loney, UGDSB spokesperson. This means administrators would have to input the marks themselves, "and there's a lot of logistical challenges with that."

"And, also, providing marks without comments and without the proper context is not considered to be wholesome feedback on student achievement."

Report cards for students in grades 1-8 were set to go out Feb. 18-20. They would have communicated how students were doing for the first half of the year, but will no longer be issued.

Things are a bit different at the high school level, however, where marks are needed to get into post-secondary institutions.

Loney said the board will still be sending grades to the Ontario Universities' Application Centre, where universities go to look at marks. They'll also be providing students with a report card, but without teacher comments.

"So there will be no impact to those applications to post-secondary," she said.

A source at a Guelph high school, who wished to remain anonymous, said universities don't see the comments teachers leave anyway.

"Those are for the parents, and for the students to reflect on their progress," they said.