Why does the school do this?

[Rach5l]

Twice a year DC school send home all their books with them.
It's a massive palaver you got to send in a big bag for them to lug home all their books and then you've got to promise to look after them and not damage them and return them first thing on Monday.
They say the point is so that you can share the child's learning with them?!
I don't know what I'm looking for or looking at. Yes it's nice to see poems and what have you but we get the books given to us permanently at the end of the year anyway, I just think it's a waste of time and a stress that I don't need.
I can imagine it's useful if you're a teacher yourself but other than that what am I supposed to do with them??

No idea (teacher). I’d never agree to doing that!
Some parents will love it...if only to have the opportunity to find a teacher’s spelling mistakes or grammatical errors.

It's probably just so that parents can't claim to have no idea what their children are up to/able to do. I love looking through them at Parents Evening (but I teach, so accept that it's probably easier to 'spot' stuff than for non-teachers.

We get all the DCs books sent home at the end of each school year. I don't have the heart to chuck them all out so each DC has a box in the loft with all that tat; we'll never look at them til they're 25 and God knows what they'll do with them then.

Last time our school did this, they gave each kid a couple of sticky labels, one for a piece of work they really enjoyed doing, and one for for something they were proud of. That was quite useful in getting them to talk about the work.

I assume you're meant to look through them with your child. Ask questions, talk about what they're doing.

We get to go in and look through their books one afternoon a year. I have to book time off work and I have no idea what I am looking for either.

We view ours at parents' evening before or after the appointment. Suggest that.

Oh gosh, I'd never send books home until they are finished. I'd never get them back.

We can look at parents evening too, before we wee the teacher. When I ask what dd has done she often says she can't remember. It is nice to actually see what she has been doing.