To wonder why some parents don't go to parents evening?

[Lampsinthemist]

I don't pretend to be the best parent but surely you'd go, wouldn't you?

I was one of the few there - why would you miss this?

Primary school ones were okay but secondary school parents evenings are awful.

It would be a nightmare taking younger children because the teachers are all in different classrooms dotted around the school, both upstairs and downstairs, and you need to be fast to get to each appointment on time.

The appointments inevitably overrun and you are left with the dilemma of whether to stay and wait for the late one or leave to get to the next one on time and potentially miss seeing the late teacher altogether.

The teachers look shattered. Last year my final appointment was with a teacher who had lost his voice. He could manage to croak and point to a list of results but that was all.

I've been to every one so far but I don't really feel as though I have ever gained anything useful by going. I already know about ongoing issues because the teachers concerned will usually email or phone me.

Ds did have one teacher who called him the wrong name throughout the appointment but she apparently also did this in lessons too. (She once explained to ds that it was because he reminded her of her son. I'm still not sure whether that was a good thing or not!)

I've only missed one. I didn't go to dd's as I was in hospital being checked out after a bleed.

I've asked dd's teacher for a meeting after school but still waiting.

I'm still in the early stages, but I have a couple of theories...

Crappy sign-up system is a factor. Slots are booked by using a sign-up sheet on a board in the playground: this is fine for the 10 year olds who are capable of booking a slot on their parents' behalf; not so good for a 4 year old who has just about figured out how to write their name by themselves. Depending on when the sign-up sheet is put out, it can mean that the parents who do manage to pick their DCs up in person every day get the pick of the time slots and the rest of us get whatever's left - even if it's at 3:30 which we can't normally make anyway.

Seeing as I only get paid for the hours I do, I've developed a fairly hard-nosed attitude to parent communication events which normally happen during working hours. I'm sort of OK with losing half a day's pay for parents' evening (we got the 3:30 slot this term based on crappy sign-up system) if it means I get a good idea of what DD is doing, what her strongest areas are and what she needs to work on. If I'd been to all the parent communication events on reinforcing phonics at home, how to support your child's reading, how to develop a positive attitude to Maths in your child, the importance of cursive writing etc etc etc, I'm not entirely sure that each session would have given me £x worth of value, nice though they are.

"If you need parents' evening to find out stuff about your DCs, you're not properly engaged. If the teacher needs you to know something, they'll find you."

Er...really? Because it's happened to me twice that there have been ongoing issues that I only find out about at parents evening. I make sure the homework get done, I send stuff in for the (endless) school fairs and pta stuff, I check the homework book. The school has my work, home and mobile number and my email.
Am I supposed to be regularly emailing the teacher on the off chance that ds is playing up and I haven't been told?
How much more "engaged" should I be? I was told that the previous 8 weeks had been a write off. I don't think I will go to any more parents evenings this year. I will just intermittently email or ring the teacher for updates.
She'll love that I expect.

I don't finish work until 6:00pm, have an hours commute so don't get back to my home town till 7:00pm and by that time our parents evening is over.

I do however take time off work to attend at least 1 or 2 a year.

It has never occurred to me and/or DH to not go to a parents evening and I think the vast majority of parents and my children's primary schools also went. Obviously I expect to be contacted by the school if their are major issues with my child's learning but I don't think I would be contacted about more minor ones.

God I couldn't miss it. I'm dying to know what they've been up to. I take dh as back up now after a particularly bad one in reception year where they accused me of various things - dc was telling tall tales at the time. But we are lucky in that we have worked locally and popping out for an hour isn't an issue.

I agree the sign up system is unfair. Our current school does a sort of tick box letter thing which is better. But the times are still afternoon only pretty much and we got about a week's notice. Not many people can duck out of work with a week's notice, especially if they've got a commute.

What I gain out of them is that I have absolutely no idea how my dc is doing academically, socially or anything else without that contact. I could hope for the best. But it's helpful to get some insight on whether they're having problems or needing extra help. This year we discovered some shortfalls with maths which we're now trying to work on. We do get a written report but it doesn't come until quite a way through the year.

Having been at a parent's evening the other night as a teacher and watching a mum wrestle young children round when they should have been in bed was tough. Yes you can take them but really, no one's focus is on the child in question when a toddler is trotting around or wailing on the floor or picking chewing gum off the tables and eating it

I go but with toddler there is little point. I can totally understand if dc with other dc they cant farm out dont go.

I understand link between dcp who dont attend and dc who dont do well, owever some dc will be doing really well and will be supported at home and there is nothing to say at pe, than, yes they are doing so well.

Our school has a parents evening (3-6pm), every term. Plus it's a different evening per year. So for use with two in different years that's 6 half days a work just to see teacher 10 mins and learn little. That's without 101 other events like school plays, concerts, fairs, sports days throughout the year. Dh and I work full time and if it doesn't fall on a time we would usually be working from home it's difficult to take that much time off. It's about 2 full weeks in total for everything. Seeng as many only have 4 weeks off a year that's a lot. Especially as many want to see that time off for time with their children or if children are ill

If their reports are good there isn't really much point as all I do as a teacher is reiterate what I've written about them doing really well and their subject grades etc. If there are issues raised in the report they should attend.

sparkly thats interesting!! All our reports are excellent and thats what we get told by gushing teachers too, excellent, excelling etc.

kids don't have book bags
kids lose the letter
parents don't look in book bags
parents don't send the form back
parents can't read the letter let alone sign it and send it back
parents book and then just don't turn up
parents aren't fussed
parents don't want to hear anything remotely derogatory about their smalls (whereas i want to know good/bad/other etc etc)
parents work shifts
no childcare
parents can't get to school in the evenings
lack of transport
lack confidence to speak to teacher/think it's going to be bad news

seniors parents evening is a bit of a bun fight but i still go

so many reasons why they don't go.

And I do think not having a phone no that the school can contact you on is poor parenting.

Not sure if it is still the case but on some networks if you had no credit then you could not receive calls.

Phones that are not topped up are disconnected.

There are some other reasons - not being allowed a phone at work, if a parent is arrested then often their phone is confiscated, there are other reasons that a phone number may not connect tot he parent.

Workplaces cannot refuse parents the right to receive emergency calls about their DC from school.

Can I just say there's no way a school today can see a C as "good enough" - the expectation for ALL schools is that ALL pupils make certain amounts of progress and I very much doubt there's a school in the land which shrugs its shoulders and decides to let students muddle through with the bare minimum! It's just so far removed from how schools work now. Teachers are under massive pressure to set high targets for students.

Really it might work that statistically a child is meant to make a certain level of progress but that is not the same thing as a child meeting their potential - learning is not linear - development is not linear. When the expected amount of progress is made - schools have met their requirements. My dcs are late developers - they are summer born, so that's to be expected. DD was set a target in line with her Sats score for KS3 - she met it after just 2 terms - it was supposed to take her 2 years, good job she's not motivated by targets.

My sil's child was making the required level of progress, which for him was a grade C, so the school stats were fine, the teacher was fine but he was not working very hard at all, he had so much more he could have achieved had he been encouraged to apply himself - it was good enough for the school but not for the pupil.

I don't go (DH does though). We're not allowed to take the children so one of us has to stay at home and look after them.

We've never been told anything we didn't already know at parents' night but that's not the point. Our DDs get a chance to show us their work, their classroom, what they've been working on etc. It shows them that we're interested and engaged in their education and take it seriously. What sort of a message does it send out to your kids if you could go, but don't (obv work commitments can make attendance difficult for some)?

I didn't attend DS1's this term, but that was because my ex was at work until 9pm that evening, and it was not possible for me to attend unless I took both DSs with me and walked 45 mins there and 45 mins back in a hurricane and thunderstorm for a 5 min slot.

Instead I prebooked a 30 minute slot during the teacher's surgery time, for the week after. We spent 45 minutes discussing the possibility that DS1 has ADHD and what can be done to help him, after spending about 3 minutes discussing DS's academic performance this term (no probs, ahead of all targets, but could be much much further ahead than that - his hyperactivity and non stop talking/questioning is holding him back academically and socially. Five mins is not long enough to discuss all that!).

I always go. I don't do drop offs/pick ups so don't get a chance to even clap eyes on their teachers otherwise. Particularly for primary school, I like to clap eyes on their teachers once in a while. We're fortunate in that dd's primary school offers appointments up to 8pm as we're usually not home until 6. Both mine have never had anything unexpected said about them, but I like to see the classroom and look at their work. We don't get a report until the end of the year so wouldn't know much otherwise. Thank you Jessica for your post, it's lovely to hear that teachers don't find them a waste of time :)

We will have our first experience of a secondary school Parents' Evening, complete with lists of appointments made by dd (who wanted to choose who we saw, I don't think so dd1) next week. Can't wait.

They are awful and I hate them, but I always go.

I like to meet the different teachers, so that I know who the DC are talking about, I often have questions to ask the teachers, and I think that the DC like me to go. it's kind of like them showing me where they work, and spend their time. Now they are both at secondary I don't really get to go there otherwise.

I always go, it was an ordeal when DS1 was at high school, for reasons too long and complicated to explain he majorly underachieved and I could tell that most of his teachers were, at best, exasperated with him and, at worst, disliked him.

DS2, is extremely hard working and bright and his teachers all like him, I go to parents night for the lovely warm feeling of parental pride, it recharges my parenting batteries. (DS2 refuses to come with us though).

Ditto DS3.

I've not RTFT but another reason parents might not go is because they don't want to run the guantlet of other parents. If you've had hassle in the playground, or your child is the naughty one, or your child has been a victim of bullying, there might be people you just don't want to see and you'd rather talk on the phone or have an email update or have a private meeting.

I always go but DH doesn't bother as we never learn anything new or useful and it's just a chance to put a face to a name (secondary school).

For primary I found it useful to just double check on my dc's behaviour and friendships, the academic side was rarely informative.

My DM (single mum) never went to any parents' evenings and I found that a bit sad as all my friend's parents went. So I will probably always go to my dc's just for that reason.

I've found parents evenings very different in different schools. I would have missed the infant ones for the world.....someone telling me how funny and clever my child is? Well of course they are.

Y12 parents evening was an occasion I would have happily never experienced.

But I don't think there's much point asking on MN why parents don't go, because most posters are very interested in their DCs development, and if they don't go to parents evening arrange another meeting with the teacher which will be a lot linger than 10 mins .