To expect an appointment with all my child's teachers?

Why do you need to see more than 4 or 5 teachers? I think we ended up seeing Maths, English, Geography and History in Year 7. Should have seen science as well but they were off sick on the day. 5 mins each with about 2 mins taken up asking DS what he thought about the subject as school recommended he be there. DS has SEN, not sure we learnt that much we didn't already know other than that his Geography teacher hadn't read his SEN information. It was really a waste of time.

How many do you expect?
maths
english
a foreign language
art
drama
music
pe
home economics
computing
technical
geography
history
politics

Wow 12 teachers in secondary school, that’s a lot isn’t it?

Lol when I was at school we didn't even have parents evenings. My teachers then would often teach every year group at the school (Yr 9, 10, 11) with 4/5 tutor groups per year. Hundreds of kids per teacher. Chances are if a teacher needed to speak to you then they already would have. Lesson learned for next time! Get in early to book who you want

Our school sends out a email telling you what date the appointments will be out always at 7pm. I make a list of top 6 I want to see followed any other teachers think the school sets a limit of 8. Normally get them one after the other though am on at 7pm and off by 7.02.pm

I work in a school and most of our teachers teach 2/3 subjects that cover all year groups so imagine that for parents evening. As someone pointed out, try and go for the teachers you think you desperately need to see and email the rest for an update, I’m sure they would be happy to oblige. I don’t think I managed to see all of the teachers in one par.eve in 16 years of attending parents eve with my two, my daughters school only allowed us to choose 6 and pastoral care if it was needed.

Not in my experience.

So you want teachers to stop teaching so they can spend all their time meeting parents, or spend all their evenings meeting parents?

They have a life and need time to actually teach children

And no I am not a teacher myself but they do teach more than just your child

Teachers will usually meet you at any point in the year so you don't have to only do it on parent evenings... why don't you email them to arrange

I have 15 classes, there's no chance I'll ever be able to speak to 450 parents, even over the course of 5 evenings.

This really, really depends on the timetable of the teacher. I have 7 classes in the first year of high school; each one with between 30 and 33 kids.

We do give out a progress summary prior to the appointments though; with their child’s level and progress, as well as behaviour and effort scores.

This is a fantastic summary of the issue. We could force each teacher to meet with the parent of every kid they teach for 5 mins but this, alongside all the other activities that now need to be done over and above the classroom teaching, would send most staff waaay over their directed time hours, adding to teacher burnout and not helping the retention crisis. Parents quite reasonably want to speak to every teacher but we know that the most efficient use of time is to speak to the parents of key students. We tried this at my school and parents who didn't get an invitation to speak to their child's teacher were up in arms. The solution: teachers teach fewer kids so a lot more more funding, smaller class sizes. Won't ever happen. Set your alarm next time and book as soon as the slots are released.

I teach 217 in one year group 😂 I had 30 parents night appointments. And I’m also not replying to every single request for feedback I get as that is clearly not manageable. I’m actually hoping parents complain, so maybe I won’t be timetabled so ridiculously in future (and yes, I am the sole teacher for all those kids in my subject)

I teach half a year group so around 120 pupils - gcse, I have about 40 slots, and that’s with no breaks (for a wee !)

You only really need an appointment with your child’s tutor. They see them every morning and if there were any issues from other teachers they would know.

That's really not true. As a tutor, I would only know if there were a serious problem with one of my form group. I certainly would not know how well or badly they were generally doing in their subjects otherwise. Nor would I have the knowledge to advise them about how to improve in subjects I don't teach, unless I'd been given detailed notes by their teacher for each of their subjects.

I see them for 20 mins each morning, and each of those five 20 minute sessions is occupied by a specific activity. I know them fairly well, mainly because I also happen to have taught all of them.

My DD just had her first high school parents evening (same as yours, 5 minute zoom slots) but we had to choose 6 subjects and then book in - there was no option to speak to everyone.

Do you really need to speak to EVERY teacher? We chose the 3 core subjects, so maths, English and science, then her languages teacher (French) and then her 2 favourite subjects out of the rest (in our case history and dance)

Our school is fairly big (nearly 200 Y7 pupils) imagine if every subject teacher had to find 200 X 5 minute slots - it's just not realistic 🤷‍♀️

Bigger classes? More classes being taught by a single teacher?

I was a child in the 80s and I didn’t get to see every teacher in the time my parents could attend the meeting as some time slots were more popular than others.

I recall a teacher tacking my parents on at the end because they wanted to speak to them.

Teachers are required to work a certain numbers of directed time (and a million uppaid over this), parents evenings have to come out of this ‘budget’ therefore usually 3 hours. It’s not their fault. Yabu.

YABU. I’m a secondary teacher, I have 80 pupils each week from S1 (year) 7. I can only see 30 parents in an evening. You should also get regular tracking information and an annual report from every subject. If you need an update from a specific teacher, contact year head/pastoral teacher and request it through them.

You only really need an appointment with your child’s tutor. They see them every morning and if there were any issues from other teachers they would know.

One year I taught 3 year seven classes. So this was 90 kids in 3 hours. I couldn't speak by the end of the night. I know the argument may be have more parents evenings but there is no time or staff capacity.

If there are any significant issues the school would have told you already but absolutely email in should you want an update or have any specific questions.

I used to tell my students that if their parents couldn’t see me and they wanted to, I could ring them or send them an email instead. Seemed to work ok. Bit of extra work for me, but not a massive amount would take me up on it so it wasn’t too bad.

It's only the first year.....and just a few months in. Multiply your 'expectations' x hundreds of students and they are impossible.

If there's any pertinent info that needs to be related from/to either the school or you then there are many other times in the academic year to do this.

Not a teacher, nor a parent of school age dc (anymore), just an imo.

I don't think it's unreasonable to expect an appointment whatever level your children are performing at

I currently teach 125 children in our year 7. 5 minutes each = over 10 hours. How would you like me to approach that, bearing in mind I have my own children to look after and I’m a single parent?

It isn’t reasonable to expect teachers to speak with all parents unless the teacher concenrned has less students than parents evening slots.

Re school cloud - our school uses this & can book all teachers, including non exams ones like pupil support, pe,re etc if you wish.