Education Minister Liz Sandals is urging parents to schedule a meeting with their child’s elementary school teacher as a way to get a better idea of their progress in the absence of a detailed report card.

The union representing Ontario elementary school teachers has previously said that they will not provide comments for report cards as part of province-wide work to rule action and on Tuesday Sandals admitted that students may only be sent home with a letter indicating whether they passed or failed.

The lack of formal grades is due to the fact that teachers will only be submitting final marks to school administrators and will not be preparing report cards themselves, leaving a limited number of staff to input the data.

“What I am advising parents to do is to call their child’s teacher and set up an appointment so they can see if there is anything that they need to know,” Sandals said. “I think our teachers will want to pass on information to parents because they have invested a full year in teaching their children.”

According to a Toronto Star report, many local school boards had hoped to hire extra staff to input marks so students could be given full report cards but the Ministry of Education refused to provide additional funding for that purpose.

As a result, Sandals said that principals will largely be responsible for producing report cards and the amount of information contained in them will vary, depending on the school.

“Every single elementary report card requires 27 pieces of information so if you have a very small rural or Northern school with just 75 kids that is 2,025 pieces of information and that’s OK, the principal can do that. Now, if you have 750 kids that is 20, 250 pieces of information. The principal can’t do that. It would just be impossible,” Sandals said.

Elementary school teachers across Ontario began job action on May 11.

As part of the work-to-rule campaign, the Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario says that teachers are not participating in Ministry of Education meetings, workshops or meetings with principals. Teachers are also not administering standardized tests or booking field trips for the 2015-2016 school year.