if you are a headteacher, why is it apparently impossible......

[Ncncncagain]

to give parents a reasonable amount of notice for school events that you expect them to attend or any dumb theme day that requires a costume or magenta coloured clothes ? We have experience of 3 schools (private and state primary FWIW), and the administration in all of them is dreadful. Received emails on Monday from 2 schools asking us to attend daytime meetings this coming Monday and Tuesday. So 7 &8 days notice respectively. Nothing on previous newsletters or term calendars. DH and I both work, no where near the schools. We both have a reasonable amount of flexibility with sufficient notice, like a month, but can't do much with only 7 days. AIBU?

@VladmirsPoutine - yeah need to prioritize and be ruthless about it. For us home work (and exams) is the most important, then performances my child is part of, then parents evenings. Everything else will be managed according to our availability.

This is why effective school admin is so very important - because ft working parents are the people that schools should want to engage (they have more money, are more likely to donate larger sums, and are most likely to be able to offer work experience opportunities - applies to older kids in secondary schools)

Like weddings, most school events are an invitation not a summons.

🙄

This used to drive me mad when my DS was at school. Sometimes we only had a day or two's notice! And like you I worked. I think the school thought we had nothing better to do than be at their beck and call.

I'm feeling a bit sorry for the teachers.

How do they manage with their DC?. How do they manage when they have to attend functions at their own DCs schools?

Pretty sure they would find it difficult to organize their own calendars .

I suspect that teachers own DC sometimes miss out so that other parents needs can be accommodated.

Disclaimer: I'm not a teacher. My DD is (primary). She works part time b ut often misses out on her DC's events at their schools but she acknowledges that this is part and parcel of being a teacher.

This drives me mad. We regularly get just a weeks notice for events etc. I cannot reorganise my work at that level of short notice (nursery, so have to factor in ratios etc). The worst at our school is the huge number of "costume days". We have had only three days notice for some of these. For parents that work full time there is little option but to buy the costume. I have two children in different year groups and this school year, there have been twelve dress up days. It costs a bloody fortune. This is not an affluent school either.

I'm with Shawshank here, I think unless you've worked in a school, you've got no idea what the staff actually spend a lot of their time doing. Like when the Head is spending three solid days trying to sort out an urgent and traumatic social care situation and then has to take shit in the playground at the end of the day because she hasn't got the sports day letter out yet. Or the next day it will be a behavioural issue, with parents' meetings, external agency referrals, meetings with teachers etc. Or a governor/local authority thing that he has to prepare for. Or the fact that a member of staff has just resigned, or gone off with stress, or got pregnant, or whatever. Or that the school server has just blown up. Or that she's spending the day trying to actually focus on school improvement and plan for the future. And meanwhile the admin staff are either doing some of this work as well, or they're trying to keep the school functioning while the SLT are fire-fighting. And this isn't unusual stuff - this is what life is like, day in day out, even in 'leafy' schools, and particularly in small schools, where there are just not enough staff to go round. When I worked in a school office, I once had a parent express genuine surprise that I couldn't drop everything to immediately look for her son's missing plimsoll, because she honestly couldn't think what else I would be doing with my time. Well, first I need to phone social services to chase up an urgent child concern, then I need to organise the school photos, then I need to treat nine children's first aid problems, then I need to update the school website, then I need to administer a half a million pound budget, then I need to write three policies, then I need to deal with the fire alarm maintenance man, then I need to fix the photocopier, and then maybe by the end of the day I might manage to have a wee. As a working parent I do understand how annoying it is that you don't get more notice of the date for the Year 3 spelling bee, but there really are good reasons why it doesn't always happen.

The DC's school is improving on this. The first year was a nightmare. At least with teaching FT myself, the multitude of reading mornings, maths afternoons etc were just a write-off, so that simplified things. Other events like non-uniform day did matter when they get ballsed-up.

It was complicated by the various methods of communication, so if you had a feeling something was coming up, there was the trawling for bits of paper, searching through emails, looking up dojos and hunting through text messages.

There was once the email sent Friday afternoon about a themed clothes day on the Monday. Unusually I was away for the weekend, and out of phone signal most of the time so didn't check into my emails in that time. Fortunately I had stopped working by then so was able to run home, grab something then join the queue of parents who also failed to get the message in time.

Paper letters are only really done for consent forms now. Most of it is email and on the half-termly newsletters. Class specific by dojo and urgent by text. I have learned to get all details for anything child related into my phones calendar ASAP.

Communication at my DS school is shocking, I had a text yesterday afternoon to tell me that they are having an open afternoon for parents today!
Although, saying that, I had a letter back in March for a school trip happening in July ythat they wanted the money for by the end of April, they sent "reminder" texts every week till I paid it!

Angels, most teachers never even get to their own children's Leavers' Service. Certainly no way they can attend assemblies etc. We're working and have no flexibility/days off option.

And what Laugh said. We're a small school too. We do try our best.

Not just the schools. I had an NHS appointment letter arrive for a hospital over an hour away. I received it on getting home on the Friday and the appointment was 0845 on the Monday. Just when did they think I was going to ask for time off?

...and frankly this same theory of giving adequate notice could be applied to class projects/special homework assignments.

Our primary school seems to delight in coming up with time-intensive home craft projects that supposedly support reading and maths. FFS, can’t a child just come home and actually read their book at 9yo? No, this week it was ‘build a diorama illustrating the main themes, blah blah blah’. In two days. With a helpful note to ‘just find a shoe box’. Yeah, and a craft shop open at night, an extra £15 and several spare hours of time. It achieves the opposite effect in the household- a lesson in how to make everyone hate reading, school and teachers!

My favourite was the 1 day notice for a special fundraising day. Please send children dressed in the national colours of the Nepalese flag, also send a family donation and a sheet of sponsors.

Surely I don’t need to form a freakin parents committee to highlight why these things are a problem? One school mum I know just laughs and doesn’t participate. Ever. Her kids are resigned to it. I’m terribly envious.

At my DD’s school, they’ve had sessions that parents need to attend with an hour’s notice and then moaned about the parents that didn’t go. Apparently going to work instead just shows you don’t care

DS school has to be one of the absolute worst. Given I am about the most easily confused person on the planet this really boggles my mind.
Last year we got notification for a really important overseas 5 night trip one week before the trip was due to drpart and a request for consent!it was over half term so about half the class hadnt ecpected it so were skready on prearranged family activities.
The information we received consisted of a photocopy of plane tickets for each way and a hotel name.
That has to be one of the worst cases going but is generally representative of the school!!!

With a helpful note to ‘just find a shoe box’.

I think a lot of schools just assume that everyone has a big rambling house with a cupboard of crafty bits and pieces like loo roll inners, shoeboxes, bits of colored paper etc.. I live in a small apartment and rubbish gets chucked out--we don't have space.

I think trouble is teachers and school want to be treated the same as any other 'person or industry', but they is no way this type of lack of organisation would be acceptable.

We had a fantastic bursar/office manager and we had newsletters with all the key dates, events for the whole year, every month. But unfortunately for our school she moved to another school.

We now get a newsletter once a half term which helpfully tells us what has happened in the previous term but not what coming up. The calendar on their website only has the current month information.

Where as my child who is at high school, have a year details on their school calendar. In fact I can look see the holidays up to September 2020, and it has penciled in events as well. So it is possible, if you have good admin people.

Teachers work incredibly hard and i tbink for the most part do their best. In my school the parents that complain about lack of communication have normally missed the initial letter/email/txt message/poster or communication with all the dates set out. It's not always the schools fault.

The school where I teach and my DD's school are fantastic at this. Still doesn't alter the fact that if DH and I are both teaching then we can't cancel a lesson or lecture just to attend an assembly. Our workplaces are an hour from DD's school so it's a minimum half day off situation.

Imo good communication from schools takes 1. Acknowledgement from the school that timely communication is important, 2. Competent senior and junior staff (senior to set the dates and make the venues available, junior to actually get the info out) and 3. Sorting out channels that work for parents who don't drop and collect. I missed out on important info in DD's first year due to some of it being given on a noticeboard at the classroom door - which I never saw. However, when I realised and complained, they sorted it immediately.

Whether schools should be attempting to involve parents (mums) quite so much in delivering the curriculum is another question, I think.

I have said this on many times before, but all this directly drives the gender pay gap as one luckless family member (normally the mum) takes responsibility for trying to keep on top of it.

We were given less than 2 weeks notice to have DC dress in their "national costume" which I cannot buy anywhere locally and a shipment from relatives in that country wouldn't make it on time short of paying loads for DHL. The event has been on the calendar all year, why didn't they let us know months ago that the children needed to have an outfit prepared!

Well you don’t have to go. I’m a teacher so can’t take time off for stuff in my children’s school. So I just don’t go.
Schools don’t have the resources or money to have amazing admin I’m afraid. My school can’t even afford glue sticks at the moment.

OK, I agree, some of these are extreme (and I find it hard to believe the story about the overseas trip - surely parents had to pay for it in advance, and how did the school confirm flights without passport details?). I'm a very organised person, and we used to do much better than some of these stories - I made sure there were lists of dates for the term etc - but it was still often necessary to announce certain events with only a couple of weeks' notice. As for parent meetings at an hour's notice - yes, but only in response to a serious incident, and how can the school plan for when a child is going to punch another in the face?

Clutterbugs, I don't know how big your child's primary was, but there is a huge difference between a secondary school and a smallish primary. A primary might well have no teaching or management staff with any non classroom time apart from the Head (and sometimes the Head will teach too). There's probably only one Senco and they probably teach as well or only work a day or two. Maybe one or two admin/finance staff. Maybe only a few hours a week of caretaking time. That's it. A secondary will have far more people - of course they're all still very busy, but there's just more capacity in the system to get stuff done. I've seen the difference first hand, and it's a totally different picture.

It's not a monetary issue mostly in my experience (cost was more of a consideration pre internet/email/mobiles). The fact that schools vary so wildly suggests it's mostly to do with whether they actually think it's important or not. The fact that different GP practices and dentists vary so hugely with how well they communicate supports that too. There is an element here of public sector organisations not recognising that they are service providers, because we, the parents are not in fact customers nor do we directly pay.

The bottom line though is sad children and parents. I felt like absolute crap when neither DH/me/my mum/a friend could attend a Mother's Day assembly, but at least I'd had plenty of notice. But I don't remember my (SAHM) mum in the 70s ever being invited to such a thing!

topcat2014 maybe you could get dh a job at your factory. At his factory there can only be 2 people per team booked on leave per shift. And leave is booked in September for the following year. If you need to book a day after that, you may be lucky and find there is a spare slot, but more often than not, the leave is taken. They've had someone on long term sick this year which has made it even harder as they haven’t been properly replaced so already a ‘man down’.

But obviously you only have experience of your own factory and assume they must all work the same. They don’t. You are really lucky to be able to take an hour off here and there for school events. I wouldn’t change that job if I were you.

Our school is quite bad for this too. Things like parents' evenings are set in August for the whole year. It's the things like concerts, or special assemblies, or the "festivals of learning" which happen on random mornings through the year.

I'm self-employed so can usually attend but DH works a fair distance from home and regular has meetings at the other end of the country. He needs far more than a week's notice.

Think our school gets it as right as any school is going to with this one - we get a long term outline of provisional dates for events at the start of each term, a weekly bulletin with everything going on across the school each week, and each class does a half termly newsletter which has the key dates for that class on it. Yes stuff gets changed, sports day being the usual suspect - but we have a date where we are told the decision will be taken about sports day the following day and us notified in the light of the weather forecast.

There's the odd impromptu thing like classes hitting their reward points target and choosing to have a pyjama day but these get emailed out and are stuff that you have at home anyway - it's usually things like pyjamas to school, or bring a teddy bear in.

They also do things like putting parents evenings in on the same day as the nativity play so that if you're taking annual leave to attend one, you can easily attend the other as well, and block two inset days either side of a weekend toward the summer so people can have a long weekend away without having to go down the absence in school termtime route. And try to organise holidays, insets and things like plays and PTA events in cooperation with the junior school to make sure parents don't have to be in two places at once.

I think they're fantastic - and the office staff are lovely too - and our SENCO is especially fab... she can stop my eldest who never shuts up talking mid-sentence with a single raised eyebrow which is a talent I'm continually impressed by.

Oh and we even still have glue sticks and working whiteboard pens at this point in the school year which is a really rare feat.