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?

Nobody's picked up on my mums v dads point, but I think it's quite interesting. So - those of you with husbands/partners, how many of them get cross about the fact that they don't get enough notice to take time off for events? I don't mean the big ones - nativity, parents' eve, sports day - I mean the endless assemblies, Y3 recorder performance, bring your pet in, meet the teacher etc. My guess is, not many. IME, it doesn't generally occur to dads to come to these things because, hey, they're working - and they wouldn't dream of taking time off. They generally only go if they're SAHD, or work from home, or happen to have a day off. I suppose my point is, they don't feel any guilt or anger about this, it's just the way it is. Dunno, am I wrong? Interesting to know if other parents/schools are the same.

Yes to this, shame no one told Ofsted!
Nothing to do with Ofsted where I am.

So - those of you with husbands/partners, how many of them get cross about the fact that they don't get enough notice to take time off for events?
Mine does.

Billy one weeks notice might be enough if it just means shifting your coffee date or cancelling a gym class. Needing to book time off in that time is nigh on impossible for most parents. It’s the same when you get a message on Monday saying the kids need to build a scaled model of their town by Friday

And on mums v dads DH tends to go to more school events and do most pick ups. But school alwaystry and ring me if DS is ill, complain if they can’t contact me but never call DH who is the primary contact who is often wfh.

That's bad, lifeover, if he's listed as primary contact - that is something I would have a sharp word with school about. (At my last school, one of the things I did was change the policy of assuming that the mother was main contact unless told otherwise, because it made me v cross. ) Maybe my experience is unusual, but I think there's a societal issue here. Increasingly parents choose either through choice or necessity that both parents will WOH, but the expectation is often still that mothers will come to school events or sort out costumes etc. Yabbers, out of interest, would you and your DH take joint responsibility for sorting out the last minute cardboard model or world book day outfit? Maybe you do, but if so I think that's unusual.

Mercifully my kids school's aren't too bad with the notice thing and have a calendar of events which is great. The odd thing slips through and we just have to say no but the DCs are fairly sanguine about that.

They do seem, however, to have a genius for scheduling trips at times that fuck about with childcare arrangements. I think they think ten minutes won't make a difference but it really, really does.

For example today my daughter has a school trip requiring her to be in school about ten to fifteen minutes earlier than normal, and is due to arrive back five minutes after the end of the day.

I suspect that when they were scheduling this they thought they were minimising hassle for us but actually it's fucked up everyone's wrap around arrangements because of course our nursery won't drop kids off ten minutes early or hang around until the trip gets back. So loads of parents who would normally use wrap around care are scrambling to cover both ends of the day.

Obviously they can't guarantee to be back for a particular time but would it have been so hard to stick to normal starting times and leave school ten mins after registration? That would only have been a half day off for lots of folk.

KneelJustKneel - but they are dressed up as book characters! The point of World Book Day is to share and encourage a love of reading, not to dress up in princess dresses and superhero outfits because you like films/that's the only fancy dress outfit you own, which is what the majority of children seem to do. Tbh, I think it's a bit pathetic so many parents do that just to stop their children nagging when there are other options open to them that require equally minimal effort, but considerably more imagination and consideration of the actual point of the exercise.

Admittedly, I did enjoy it when I dressed my children as characters that required more imagination and effort on my part to pull off, but there is not always the time, or the children actually want to be a particular character who is just a human child or adult for which minimal dressing up effort is required, anyway, as it's all about the way the character behaves and what they have done in the book, not the way they look. No wonder so many parents think these days are pointless when they treat them as pointless activities designed to annoy.

As for other dressing up days - I agree doing lots of them would be extremely aggravating, especially on virtually no notice, particularly if your personality is such that you either like to do things properly or not at all.

And I can't believe that there are actually tonnes of teachers out there who enjoy doing multiple dressing up days, either. They generally result in more bad behaviour, over excitement, tears and accidents as children traipse around in ridiculously impractical clothes that they are tripping up in, getting overheated in, or spilling things on and becoming inconsolable. It's a pain in the arse for the school too, tbh (as are multiple enormous parental homework creations). That's probably why the schools I have experience of don't do them too often!

I give you the sports tournament. Announced but no details of when or where it might be. Several weeks later team announced to the children who all get excited. Parents given week's notice that the tournament requires the selected players to be collected at lunchtime and taken to venue half an hour away and then collected 3 hours later. Information on the others members of the team wouldn't be released due to data protection. Neither would they ask on the permission slip if parents were able to lift share and happy to have their details given out. So my dc had to be dropped from the team and then hear about how great it had been from the others.

It's so frustrating that they assume that all mothers are constantly available. At primary the majority of teachers are working women but they have no empathy for other working women. If they did you would get requests for costume on a Friday rather than a Monday, more understanding that you can just drop everything to attend various events.

Complaints are always met with "well teachers don't get to see their children's activities either" which begs the question of why bother doing it as it only upsets the children when they lose out on attending something or having a parent see them do something. If I wasn't committed to my child I wouldn't be out there working to put a roof over their head and food on the table.

More understanding that you can't just drop everything

(MrsCollins just a small point - there are legal reasons why they can't put on the slip about lift sharing. If they help in any way to organise lifts, even by facilitating contact, then they are taking responsibility for safeguarding the child during that lift - ie they are taking on the legal burden of ensuring that the car is roadworthy, driver is suitable etc. I know it sounds like stupid red tape, but that's the way it is. Lots of schools still do it - but they really shouldn't.)

Mrscollinssettled - I can see why you found that extremely irritating and that your dd was upset. However, it is unlikely the school could afford to provide transport for you, or to cover the cost of those parents who refused to pay for school-arranged transport - expecting parents to ferry their children to and fro is a feature of an increasing number of school activities, so you can blame austerity for some of that. It's either that or stop providing anything more than a basic education, and whilst some parents might well be happier with that, you can guarantee plenty more will complain about it. It will also be the case that your dd was not the only one to be upset, given that only a small number of children will have been selected and all the other children who wanted to take part will have been disappointed, too. Plus, if the school refused to take part in sports tournaments because they are in their nature competitive and exclude most of the children, which might disappoint some of them, I know it would attract even more parental complaints still. Then add on the fact it's a sports tournament elsewhere, so the school did not organise the event and aren't hosting it, so they aren't going to have full control over how much notice can be given of final details. Then add to the mix that a lot of schools get tied up in knots with concerns about data protection, safeguarding, risk assessments and liability insurance, and the extreme alacrity with which some parents complain certainly doesn't help them relax about any of that!

As for avoiding data protection and safeguarding issues for the school, private social media groups set up by parents for parents at the school could be useful here - there is nothing to stop a parent on that from asking the other parents on there if any of them are taking their children to the tournament and if so, would they be willing to give your child a lift, too? That then leaves the school out of the equation, provided the parents whose child is getting a lift specifically inform the school that they have made the arrangement and are personally happy with it, so that the school is willing to let a non-parent sign the child out to take them there!...

Ps if the school only had short notice of the date and time of the event itself, even if it had the money or could rely on parents paying, it might not have been able to arrange transport in time. LA maintained schools can only use providers from an approved list that have been vetted for suitability. They might all have been booked out. It goes back to safeguarding and liability insurance that you can't just do an internet search and ask any transport provider that comes up.

Reading this thread I’m feeling very grateful that my DCs school provide a list with all important dates of meetings/assemblies/events/parents evenings for the academic year in advance. Doesn’t have firm dates for school trips and things do get organised that are not on the list (fundraising or charity non-uniform/dress ups) but we always have several weeks notice.

The list of dates for the 2019/2020 academic year is already up on the school website.

If some schools can do this then surely all schools ought to be able?

Marinette - all schools I've had anything to do with have been able to do that. I'm not surprised some can't: people don't tend to be attracted to teaching because they love admin and efficiency, so it requires an extremely effective senior leadership team to ensure all staff play their part properly and everyone knows what is expected (and is supported in doing it, particularly if they are quite junior and inexperienced). There are constant distractions in primary schools, often forcing staff to deal with multiple unexpected situations at once, some of which may be very serious and time consuming, so it is very easy to be thrown off track and start forgetting stuff.

Surely the tournament organisers must plan around a specific date even if they don't know specific timings? I organise lots of things and the date is one of the first things you sort out. I get that school need to avoid any potential for litigation but such poor planning means that children miss out on things that with better organisation they could have done, or could have had their parents there to support them.

MrsCollinssettled - for all you or I know, there could have been several possible dates in the diary for the tournament until closer to the time - eg a series of tournaments, with different schools not getting confirmation of which their date was until much closer to the time. It seems a bit of an assumption of the worst case scenario to conclude that while teachers in the school were organised enough to tell everyone about a tournament weeks in advance, they weren't organised enough to mention the date at the same time if they already knew it. Yes, of course it could have been a gross error of judgement to keep a radio silence on the date, but I always try not to be uncharitable towards my children's schools! Obviously that is harder said than done if they mess things up all the time.

I'm not saying there are no rubbish school admin staff out there, but IME it's rarely inefficiency on their part that means dates don't go out. Admin staff don't make decisions about dates - typically, they're the ones constantly nagging teaching staff and SLT to make decisions about stuff so that they can inform parents. Not least because they're the ones on the front line who are getting flak from parents about it. With a short notice sports tournament, for example, it could be any number of reasons: a) the tournament was genuinely organised late, b) the organisers forgot to send the info out to schools until late, c) the school couldn't confirm yet that it had a member of staff available to go (a clash on the date, a member of staff off sick etc), or d) simply that the teacher or Head hadn't had the time to think about it and make a decision about going. Now, reason d) might sound hopeless to parents, but for all the reasons given in other posts above, the reality is that primary teaching staff and SLT work long hours (often not far off double their official working week) under lots of competing stresses and pressures, so that organising the netball tournament isn't always done as early as it could be.

walk the PE department have gained a reputation for telling the kids about tournaments weeks in advance and not giving parents details until very close to the date. It comes across as an afterthought that they need parents to provide transport.

Laugh perhaps an apology to parents for the late notice (reasons beyond our control etc) in the permission slips might go some way to making life easier for the admin staff? Fewer complaints and perhaps it might start to register with the disorganised staff?

Although there's little incentive to be more professional in organising events if there's always sufficient children with available parents to put together a team.

Everyone on MN is doing vastly important jobs that only they can do, and need to book their holidays a year in advance only half joking.

I work in a hotel. Everyone from duty manager above had to book their holidays a year in advance this year. Not an important job by MN standards but it almost pays the bills. Though I work nights, and it's a 30 min journey each way, plus the time spent there, so if I'm between nights and can't go I usually get the 'this is very important' lecture. While I appreciate that it is I can't get cover or a swap at the drop of a hat, and I need to sleep like everyone else. Makes me feel shit tbh, like choosing between keeping a roof over our head or my DDs education. Feels great to be judged for that, like I'm just lying in bed all day for the hell of it.
New group have taken over recently and things have improved communication wise, they scheduled me a phone call from head of year this term when I couldn't go, and they were great about it, shame it's her last year next year!
I understand as a parent that schools are under funded and under staffed, but I think the understanding needs to run both ways really.

MrsCollinssettled - is this a secondary school, then (primaries don't normally have a PE department!)? Fwiw, the admin staff in secondary schools do tend to whinge about PE teachers themselves for being a bit hopeless at communication! To be fair on them, they do have an awful lot of activities to organise on far shorter notice than would be the case for other out-of-school activities, and normally these are arranged with other slightly administratively disorganised PE teachers! Plus, if the school has minibuses, I think there is sometimes some confusion, with assumptions being made by PE staff about availability and then finding out that someone else has booked them out while the tournament was in the process of being negotiated. Dates for school PE fixtures can and do get changed very regularly - weather causing cancellation of one event, or problems with one school in the chain, can have knock on effects on loads of other events, as can illness and injury.

Not working anymore but when I was I would have struggled to get time off at such short notice.

Makes me feel shit tbh, like choosing between keeping a roof over our head or my DDs education

I feel like that as well, it is not that I don’t care enough to leave my unimportant job, it is that if I have to ask time out without notice even once a month, it won’t be long before this will make me look unreliable to my boss. And as said above, the job keeps the roof over our heads, so unfortunately it has to come first.

I do however place the whole blame on the school, if they cannot even get their shit together to email newsletters/communications in a regular way, what else are they neglecting?

walk no primary - there are 3 teachers who do all the PE activity on top of teaching their own classes so not PE department in the secondary school sense but they are the PE teachers.