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?

The fact that schools vary so wildly suggests it's mostly to do with whether they actually think it's important or not.

I think this is the key. Of all the schools I worked in the best communicators were the ones headed by people who a) wanted parents to be involved and b) realised it would be better for the children if parents had the best chance to be involved

Also I found that was particularly the case when I worked in areas where people couldn’t afford to just spend £10 on Amazon for a next day delivery costume - the HT’s that knew their area and wanted the engagement planned their calendars well in advance and communicated that to the parents in advance

I work in a school office. Just this week I have booked every “out of school hours” event (the parent council meetings, the p7 leavers concert) and sports day for the next year.

I have also scheduled the Christmas shows and parties.

The calendar will not only be emailed to all our parents but I painstakingly ensure everything is on our website - including the days when classes need to bring bikes in or swimming things.... I also put on the times every week when the uniform ladies are in, and the pta coffee morning every Friday.

There may be an odd “are any parents available to help for a trip” within school hours, but for those it’s not a summons and if you can’t help that’s fine.

I still get complaints about “not enough warning”....not because warning hasn’t been given of next may’s disco.... but because they saw the email this June and thought it wasn’t important

YANBU a week is not enough notice for almost anyone working. It basically favours those who don't work.

Rally your fellow parents and start making written complaints. We used pester power with my daughter's primary and now we get at least 2 weeks notice of 'theme days' and scheduled events are in the calendar as much as a term in advance but at least a month. It's still not perfect but much easier to manage. If the school want an engaged parent population it's vital to get them on-side.

I'm now finding the eldest's secondary stressful. They publish no advance dates beyond inset days, instead they rely on the children to relay information to us. My daughter is the most scatter brained person I know. She tries hard to note everything down for us but it isn't reliable. The situation stresses us both out but school insist in doing things this way. I know it's trying to prepare them for adult life but it doesn't help with my adult life when I'm trying to be there for her important school stuff without being sacked!

LaughAtGildedButterflies

There are 400 children at my DC primary school, and they now have 2 full time staff doing the bursar/admin Job. The head, deputy head and Assistant deputy head do not teach any lessons. The school actually have 6 office/admin staff.

The deputy head does all the admin/date collection for children and the assistant deputy head is the SENCO.

The High school have 800/900ish children and 4 admin/bursar staff. And yet they are capable of giving parents up to date information.

My son's school has a yearly calendar that's emailed to everyone.
The head teacher sends out a weekly newsletter that has the half terms upcoming events on it.
Lots of notice.

Clutterbugsmum - where the hell does the school get the money for 6 admin staff, a non-teaching headteacher, a deputy headteacher and an assistant head? Is this a private school? What the hell are 4 of the admin staff doing if two of them are school bursar/admin?

We have quite good notice for most things at our school, but for me, it’s the shear amount of events that they would like us to attend throughout the year that surprises me. I’m a SAHM so can usually make it, but considering working parents have to cover holiday time already, asking parents to take a morning off here and there must really eat up their annual leave time.

#Iyralala -i've never heard of any one ordering a child's costume on Amazon for £10 next day delivery! Do people really do that? #Jennaofeluria- it depends what job you do. A weeks notice is fine for me.

Unless directed to the school website for evidence, I don't believe in the existence of a state primary school with an intake of 400 children which has 6 members of admin staff and three senior leaders who do no teaching whatsoever. I also don't believe it is possible to organise an overseas trip involving aeroplane flights for primary school aged children that parents don't know about until the last minute. What school would book flights anywhere for children that know nothing about it? I know some schools have poor communication with parents, but some of the stories on here are getting ridiculous.

vulpine re amazon prime. I have, more than once. I know plenty of people who do this (working parents who don’t have time to go shopping for nonsense).

Mine are way out of school but any event which was announced within the same week (eg. Announcement Monday for Thursday event) wasn't joined in with unless i readily had whatever it was they needed at home already.

I spent 3 years trying to make the point to the school that the least notice I would / could accept was that i had it in my hand on the previous Friday. (full time working with a 1.5~2 hour commute). Same for attending things which were always in the afternoon - my bosses absolutely wouldn't countenance short notice, and the events often fell on month end which was an absolute no-go. And apparently i was an unengaged parent who didn't care...

When they moved up to secondary school i made sure i was on all the committees and PTA things possible - and pushed for annual calendars. Which were adopted, and it was so much easier.

Walkaround No it's a state school. As I said we had a very good accountant/bursar who kept a very tight hold on the budget and we had very good reserves as well.

But as I am know longer a governor, I'm no longer know the budget figures. I know there was a going they are losing a lot of funding due to the way school are funded, so I'm guessing that will change in next few years.

And as for what they doing god knows.

School admin here and I know where you are coming from. I suggest that a letter goes out on a certain date and HT says NO as parent will forget if you send them too early. Which is true. At my school parents will send kids to school when a trip is scheduled and many come in with no lunch as they don’t remember. Even texting them a few days before rarely works. The parents that do that are quite a breed here.

A week’s notice! We tend to get a text the night before!!

vulpine Yes, I’ve amazon primed for costumes, random craft materials, a sudden need for a book about a particular topic... Not at all unusual where I live, among the working parents.

Not so much the events - the schools have broadly been ok with communication about that (even if they continue to schedule parents 'evening' in the afternoon - a whole different story)

It's the costumes/random requests that always tripped us up. Famously had to cobble together a chicken costume with 24 hours notice a few years back.....

YANBU but I don’t blame the headteacher at my DC’s school, the communication throughout the school as a whole is awful! We have an app so the teachers can apparently communicate with us but they just don’t, not until the very last minute and sometimes not at all. They seemingly rely on the children to pass on messages but obviously young children aren’t the greatest messengers.

Ours is good we tend to get the details months in advance but then our head seems to have a lot of free time of their hands. Some weeks they are a head teacher other weeks offstead inspector. Not very good at dealing with bullying mind for that you want the dep head who’s much better at any parent interaction.

I bung everything in the diary as the dates are released... every other bugger on the playground doesn't do this - and just messages me! Basically my google calendar and fridge door are the Oracle Of All Knowledge in our year groups!

i've never heard of any one ordering a child's costume on Amazon for £10 next day delivery! Do people really do that?

Everyone does that.

(Well not me, because we don't have prime, butvi have a lot of kids and a large dress up box - i have used SiL's prime in an emergency)
How else do you get a fancy dress costume, to the right requirements and size within a week?
Ok...Christmas for under 8's you can usually get easily in shops, but anything else?
And usually they are more like £15-25 not £10.
I could spend three days travelling round the local towns and city looking for a Town Crier costume (or cockerel or aladdin or whatever it this time), but that'll cost me a fortune in petrol and car parking.

@Vulpine
i've never heard of any one ordering a child's costume on Amazon for £10 next day delivery! Do people really do that
I do 😳 , two working parents, way easier to do this than to go shopping after work. The prices in store are not much cheaper anyway, aren’t they? Making a costume myself is out of the question, no time and poor skills.

Vulpine

i've never heard of any one ordering a child's costume on Amazon for £10 next day delivery! Do people really do that?

Loads of people do. In one school I worked in if you searched on Amazon for whatever costume they'd been told to bring last minute then the top result for around a tenner could be guaranteed to be the one that about half the kids would rock up with.

I think this is an area that has changed a lot since women started working more. Fifty years ago, I'm sure there were very few complaints from working dads (and often there still aren't) about not being able to go to most school events - there was just no expectation that they would. But now that lots of women work too (but lots still don't), there's a real guilt thing going on among families where both parents work, because nobody can go to the events. Simultaneously, there is far more 'enrichment' type stuff in schools, so more opportunities to go in, which has made the disparity even worse. By the way, this is absolutely NOT a suggestion that women shouldn't work - it's really just an observation that schools haven't changed with the times. And tbh, I'm not sure how they could. However much notice you're given, there are only so many days off you can take to go to assemblies etc. A minority of parents at our school are often asking for more events in the evening - but that then raises childcare problems, and if you start expecting teachers to run loads of events in the evenings, you'll probably drive away the ones who are still standing! And when we did run evening events, we got a far lower turnout overall (because lots of our mums didn't work so preferred daytime events, and the ones who did work often still couldn't go). I don't know what the answer is, really.

Wow I've been educated. I just usually cobble something together from stuff I have in the house. Never Amazon primed a costume in my life.

Always seems amazing how the 'inset' days are organised or the whole school year yet a lot of events requiring children/adult input are organised at last minute as if no one has any other commitments.YANBU