Will school plays and in-person parent evenings return post covid?

[Jobseeker19]

My children have parents evening online again this year and its not just the evening.

They have decided to close the school for the day and keep the children at home instead if doing it after school hours. No online work is being made available aswell.

This will be during the middle of November so not attached to a holiday either.

Is this going to be the acceptable thing going forwards?

All of the school productions seem to be for other pupils in assembly too. Not for parents to view and not online either.

YANBU Things should begin to return to normal or at least online parents evening after a normal school day

YABU teachers shouldn't have to spend the evening speaking to parents and some things should never return to pre covid times as it works better now for everyone

To be a pedant - can it still be called a parents evening if it starts at 9am?

Year 2 teacher here...we did two consecutive parents evenings just before half term, and a Harvest Festival for parents. We are also doing a KS1 Nativity and a 'Carols Around The Tree' for everyone in the last week of Christmas term.

I guess it's an individual school call 🤷‍♀️

We had parents evening (year 2) just before half term as either face to face or over the phone. I went face to face and wore a mask.

Suspect Nativity will be filmed and put on YouTube again, which was preferable to the in-person carol concert in Reception, where people pushed to the front and held their phones up to film so, as a shorty, I saw none of it and had to explain to my tearful DC that I was actually there

Preschool are planning to have an in-person Christmas play again but will probably limit tickets to parents only and offer to sell a DVD for grandparents to watch.

@GoodnightGrandma

On line parent evening is rubbish as you just get one teacher giving you a summary. They might as well send it home in a letter and ask you to phone if you’ve any questions.

Do you realise how long that would take a teacher to prepare?

My parents' evenings are in person.

I did parents’ evenings for all of my class in person apart from a few who didn’t bother to turn up and then requested a phone call. We did a survey and that’s what the parents wanted. DD1’s parents’ evening was online which was much easier for us.

As for when the meetings happen, I would love to have a day to do it. Mine took up 3 of my evenings and I didn’t get home until 6:30 at the earliest on those days. I then had more work to do at home because I still had to prepare for the next day and mark the work from that day. My guess is that the school are using a training day for this.

Personally I'd prefer less assemblies and plays and parent visiting days.

From the POV of a LP working Ft in education it's really hard for those children who's parents can never turn up and also for those who's parents could but don't. It's a lot of extra work for teachers that I don't feel has the desired benefit.

Same with assemblies.

I wouldn't mind parents evening being online for the future. Best bit has been the fact you get your 10 min slot and then it cuts out. No more waiting for parents who cannot stock to their time slot and think their time is more important than anyone else's

I think parents evenings may stay online in many cases. Surveys at local schools have generally come back with a large majority of parents/carers wanting to retain them. It's often much easier for working parents to do a 10 minute appointment at 4:30pm with both parents logging in from work places at the same time, than then having to get to school for it.

I don't know if any school closing for them though as parents evenings are generally factored into the teacher's contact hours.

I'd imagine school plays for parents audiences will return eventually. It this winter though due to rising numbers. We've found many venues won't let us book their rooms this year and out hall isn't big enough. We are trying to find ways round it but it's very difficult or means doing the same okay several times over, which isn't ideal for young children. Think our Christmas shows will just be recorded to us and uploaded to the class blogs. The audience will be another class from same year group as we've found that the shows work better with an audience than without.

From the POV of a LP working Ft in education it's really hard for those children who's parents can never turn up and also for those who's parents could but don't. It's a lot of extra work for teachers that I don't feel has the desired benefit.

Couldn’t agree more. The heartbreak on the children’s faces when their parents don’t turn up (mostly for incredibly valid reasons) is awful.

We had in person parents evening last week. Was fantastic. Socially distanced and wearing masks and parenting waiting in playground before their slot. Felt very safe.

Online parents' evenings sound like a good idea, as they would, potentially, enable both parents to attend, as there would be no childcare issues.

I think with so few families having an adult available at a sensible time in person having an online consultation means teachers are able to see more parents. As so many can't seem to get a two hour slot (travel as well as getting there etc) but can manage 15 mins from anywhere. I don't know if it is a good thing but it's probably very parent friendly.

I don't think teachers probably enjoy it though but then most parents and head teachers have very punishing ideas about how teachers should be available.

We've had parents eve and plays in school already. Twas brilliant. I shed a tear to see my children being all super cute again!!

P. S our school is 100% back to normal. Also no worries about childcare. You're allowed to ring your kids with you to parents evening.

At my school (secondary) all the face to face stuff is back apart from parents evenings which, after a survey of staff and parents which had an overwhelming majority who asked to keep them online, will just stay as we did them in Covid times

Dd’s school production is going ahead as is the sixth form open evening.
I found online parents evening worked well.

@Aroundtheworldin80moves

Plays... hopefully in person. Plus sports day, leaving events and similar

Parents evening... done well these work well online and are better for a lot of people. Closing school for it... well some schools did that anyway. But many schools aren't.

Agreed.

To be fair, my school used to close once a year for "pupil review day", which was basically parents evening and this was years ago! I think it was one of the standard inset days but used for that.

We are still doing online parents evenings and they are spread over 2 nights. For anyone who couldn’t access the video call system, we phoned them instead. It is much more efficient and the majority of parents preferred it due to saving time and the fact that the parent could have the meeting anywhere eg in their car during a break at work.

We have very high Covid case numbers locally and a low vaccination rate so it would be unfair to have parents in face to face meetings at the moment indoors unless urgent. I also think it would be unfair to staff as we can’t enforce mask wearing for parents. It’s important for each school to weigh up the cost and benefits of what they are doing. Everything else for children in my school (clubs, trips, assemblies etc) is back to normal.

Ours was all set to return to normal normal, but the local authority has told them not to. Hopefully Spring for assemblies etc. Parents have been allowed to come on trips, watch outdoor sports events etc though.

My absolute priority though is that my kids are at school and that their experience is normal and that the staff aren’t all off ill (with covid or anything else) so if zoom parents evening is what it takes then fine by me.

I really dislike online parents evening at my kids secondary school. We had technical issues every time which meant at least one of the appointments didn't happen and often your 5 minute slot was taken up with "can you repeat that please, you're breaking up" at regular intervals. Then the system cuts you off mid sentence. I don't feel I have had any decent information and often the teacher has been forced to follow up with a phone call.

My DC secondary and primary are both online and it’s perfect. The secondary school ones used to be mayhem so I’m relieved I don’t have to go through that for the foreseeable.

At the primary school, the children are not even having whole-school assemblies yet so it’s going to be a while before parents are invited back in. I didn’t mind missing sports day (I’ve been to enough over the years) but it’s a shame about class assemblies/plays.

We've had real life open evenings but online parents' eve. It mainly works well, until the tech goes down. The defined slots means that if I have 2 classes, I'm more likely to see more of them in 3 hours. But to be fair, my school is really good at keeping in contact with parents.

My dc's high school however.....

And I agree with a pp about being glad to see the back of primary assemblies etc which invited parents. All my kids remember is that I wasn't at their various day time events. No, cos I was too busy earning money to pay for us all to live.

I hope this helps primary schools to take a step back from the having parents in for one thing or the other every other week. It’s disturbing for a lot of children and for those parents who can’t make it it makes them feel shit.

Less times for parents in school but better used wokld make more sense

We've already had normal parents' evening and it was lovely - so much more productive and 'human' for everyone. We're also fully back to weekly family assemblies and school church events, which makes everyone so much happier. Reliant on trust and common sense between all the adults - if you are ill or have symptoms, give it a miss.

Vaccines were meant to be the aide in getting us in to a position of mixing with common sense. Of course there will be rare cases of those who can't make that work (these will be the cases you hear about the most and the loudest on MN, social media, press, etc) but in the quiet rest of society, it is doable.