to tell ex that if parents evening is that important, he can sodding well go?

Email the school and explain you and daughter wont be able to make it for whatever reason. Say you're visiting family or something. Request that the teachers email you a very brief summary of the meeting and raise any concerns they may have. All teachers will have parents evening notes prepared which they can simply edit to be parent-facing and send over. It'll likely be more of the same positivity.
From working with teachers, I know they'll likely be thankful to not have to sit in front of another parent that night and sending an email will be preferred. Teachers hate parents evening.
Then, take your daughter on a nice night out together, for dinner or an activity?
Explain to DP that you'll be receiving the communication via email and use the evening to spend quality time together instead.

Definitely agree with this. So many comments that reflect that way of thinking..one pp says "surely they have to do a humanities subject"..does it not occur to them that different schools have different policies? Just upthread there are two posters giving their experience/ reaction to their parents not attending. Opposite reaction to each other but both valid in themselves. It shouldn't be difficult to comprehend but seems like it is for many 😕

Ohh apologies due then. Clearly I am not conforming to reading all previous posts :)
Judge before you conform is a great mantra!

You should absolutely call him out on his sheer hypocrisy. How dare he berate and scold you for not going to parents' evening this one time when he never attended himself.

He obviously has a great opinion of himself for someone who is an utterly crap father who was sacked for sexual harassment.

Now your children are older, do you even need to keep in touch with him? I would be tempted to block him.

I was reflecting the post I was responding to phrasing. I think judge before you conform is one of THE most important messages you can send a young person.

Well then you're not trying. In some schools, the child has to go. The teacher doesn't see you without the child,so obviously it is something they can very easily enforce.

I'm continually amazed by how so many grown adults on MN simply can't understand that other people's experiences are different from theirs. Even just on this thread, all.those saying "I'd want to.go, so you're unreasonable not to", or completely failing to comprehend that it might not be useful to someone, because you find it so.

Such rigid, childlike thinking.

Yup

Im
pleased for you, as the youngest of six this was not my experience.

I’m the youngest of 5 I’ve had no ill effects from my mother being over parent/teacher nights and not attending all. She was there when I needed her

Well, conformity is not always relevant or desirable.
It's not really a 'powerful message' either, to not go to parents evening.
I personally find parents evening a waste of time.
Although, I never even went to my gcse ceremony nor did any homework.
Still manage to build a successful high paying career on my own terms.
If you strive to conform then you will never push boundaries. The best of human inventions and progression are created by non conformists. Imagine if Einstein had conformed. His ability to question the conventional led to his scientific breakthroughs. What about Marie Curie, Alan Turing, Galileo and more.
I think OP not attending parents evening is a valid lesson in creating efficiency. Why have a 2 hour meeting when it could have been an email. Op has all the relevant information she needs to make decisions for her daughter. She won't dind out anything she doesnt already know. If the ex is bothered, he can go.

It really really doesn't. There's so much projection and generalised assumptions on this thread. Every family / child / school is different. It's irrelevant what happens at your school or what you or your kid think about parents evening. This is about the ex berating the OP for something he isn't prepared to do himself and most responses have totally ignored that.

Yes, I agree if he feels that strongly about it he should go. Actually, he should’ve already been going to every single one. It sounds like he is more interested in trying to boss you around than her education. He’s probably missing all the power over women he thought he had in his big job.

As you are in frequent contact with the school for other reasons, there’s plenty of opportunity to discuss anything that might be raised at parents evening. Maybe PPs missed that

If you think that insisting we sit in a draughty hall for 2 hours to hear "Oh yes she is doing very well, she should definitely take X for GCSE" on a loop is me showing I care, you have a strange view of being a parent!

This sends the message that if she wasn't so well behaved and hardworking, you'd be more interested.

And also that if she wasn't the youngest of your 6 children you'd be more interested.

She might think it's a waste of time now but that's because she's a teenager.

You and her dad are the adults here and neither of you are sending her a brilliant message to be fair.

The anti-large families insistence that youngest children must be neglected because parents are tired of parenting is tedious in the extreme

That's a very simplistic view. And comments along the lines of 'be careful you're treating your youngest the same as all the others' are coming from people that have experienced being the youngest child in a large family and/or from parents.

I have 3 dc - and even 'just' with 3, you still have to be aware of the 'been there done that' attitude with the youngest, and try to avoid it. I sat through a 45 minute 'meet the teacher' in September with Mrs T, when ds3 joined Y3. I've known Mrs T for 9 years, ever since eldest dc was in her class. God I was tempted to bin it off because it was of no use to me at all. But this is ds3's journey and he deserves parental attendance as much as his older siblings do.

If you think you treat your oldest child exactly the same as your youngest, you're naiive. No-one does, we can only do our best to make it as close as possible.

Would op have agreed with her oldest child that this Parents Evening was pointless and they'd skip it? No, of course not. Op is suffering from parental seen-it-all-before-itis. But failing to recognise it as such. And it IS the younger/youngest siblings that tend to miss out on events/experiences/activities because of it.

It doesn’t sound like at all. OP explained her and DD’s reasons for not attending so don’t create your own narrative.

‘Sounds like’ you are being deliberately combative

Not really sure what you want from this thread. You are happy with your decision not to attend. Others disagree, but that’s OK.

Your ex won’t attend. Sounds like you are heavily involved with the school, so I understand his reluctance, tbh. But he has no right to be angry with you if he’s not happy to step up himself.

Does that cover it?

Yes he should go. To have not been to a single parents' evening for 6 children is shocking.

Also I'm pretty sure neither of my DDs' secondary schools actually have enough appointments for all the children. If you don't get in in time you can e-mail the teacher instead for updates. So it's not an expectation that everyone goes.

If he hasn't been to any of them he obviously doesn't have a leg to stand on.

If your daughter wanted you to go that would be different. The only thing I'd say is, is she going to have to have the same conversation 9 times with each teacher about why she's not going because they'll push for her to go.

Not attending sends a powerful message that conformity is not a requirement or always desirable.

Conformity to education is a bad thing? Right ok.

Go to the options meeting for sure but I'd give this one parents evening a miss in your place. If you go your ex will think he made you do it, no way would I give him that satisfaction Op.

What total bollocks. Not attending sends a powerful message that conformity is not a requirement or always desirable. The anti-large families insistence that youngest children must be neglected because parents are tired of parenting is tedious in the extreme.

I thought DD wasn’t bothered and as fed up with them as OP?

Which is why OP needs to step up, be the parent and model some positive behaviour that shows respect for education.

I agree. For my two they were a colossal waste of time. The only time they were useful was during lockdown when we could do them online but now we went back to the hoopla of two hour race round a school for 2-5 minutes of a teachers time only to be told the kid is doing well. If your ex wants to do that then he should bloody well step up.