To think those who complain about online parents' evenings ...

[dinaminion]

... because they want to "get to know" the teachers, and don't like being cut off after their 5 minutes, are probably the same people who made face-to-face parents' evenings a nightmare for the rest of us, by hogging the teachers' attention, and over-running on their appointment slot, so everyone else was seen late, and the poor teachers were run ragged?

Long live the online parents' evening!

I dont mind online. But its much harder if you havent already established the relationship or got a feel for the school.

One of mine the switch never crossed my mind. Because i already had a pre built relationship with the school and a feel for it.
With my other child i have never set foot in his school. It is a very alienating feeling and a F2F parents evening and chance to be in the building what help feel more connected to his education.

Guess im just saying its context sensitive as with everything

Gather from the use of P4 you're in Scotland too? Our local council area was very anti-technology altogether during the pandemic. Very little video teaching, and no online parents evenings. My youngest is in S3 and our first parents evening for him in 3 years at senior school was a couple of weeks ago. I would have loved an online option. All we had was "if you have any concerns about your child's progress please contact school".

Senior school parents evenings are always a total rammy, 3 minutes per child, teachers always run behind, parents can't cover everything they want in 3 minutes, it's bedlam.

I have secondary age children and love online parent teacher meetings. The one time we had in person was stressful & tiring. 10 teachers to see in one afternoon. Eugh.
Online gives the teachers breathing space, let’s them know which pupil is coming up next on their list to discuss, means they don’t have to worry about threatening parents or parents who go on & on.

For primary, where there is one teacher, I don’t think 5 minutes would be enough.

You know it is possible to make a point without insulting those who have the opposite view, right?

yabu they are not as good as a face to face conversation.

Love the online parents evenings! One of the best things to come out of covid imo. The fact they run to time is a thing if joy. If there were ever any concerns I had about DC in school or a certain subject or that teachers had about them I would hope neither of us would be waiting months and months until parents evening to raise them! So the evening really should just be a quick overview- anything more in depth needs a separate appointment/convo

Primary - face to face is good as it is nice to get to know the teacher that spends all day with your child.

Secondary - online is an absolute godsend and saves hours of everyone's time. We used to have to book a 5-min slot with each teacher plus a 5-min gap in between to walk to the next one - so it used to take double the time, plus travel time.

I'm sure most of the parents who chose that option are SAHMs with one child and are definitely the type who want to "get to know the teacher" and treat the whole thing as a social occasion.

No, really, as I have posted, it's a genuine disability I have and face to face means I can understand and process clearly and faster which enables me to ask any questions too.

Stop making nasty judgements about peoples reasons and also SAHMs. WTAF.

Loved online. Managed to speak to all teachers because of the booking system. Could also give us a bit of a break as well.
Didn’t have to spend hours queuing in a noisy hall.
Ds wasn’t overwhelmed with it all.
Didn’t have others hovering around so finely had some privacy.

Wish they had been introduced sooner as had to miss quite a few over the years due to my health.

Any issues, I’ve never waited until parents evening to discuss things anyway unless something happened that week.

Only tech issue we had was for some reason my camera never seemed to work on parents evening 😂 Had to switch it off very quickly before ds saw me doing it.

Our school has decided to keep online permanently. I'm thrilled - no more missing out an appointment for an important subject because the teacher has no slot free, or some selfish bugger has hogged the teacher for 20 minutes and made everyone else late/clash with their other appointments.

Face to face is all very well in primary school where you need to see on or two teachers max, but in secondary you need to speak to about 10 of them - at home you can go this in less than an hour.

@WindyKnickers , I'm a sahm with one child left in the school system. I prefer online, so stop making sweeping statements. It's just as likely that a very career focused pared would value 'getting to know the teacher'. Stereotypes help no-one.
It's not the fault of sahm that you have two kids at different schools and have to co-parent with someone who lives elsewhere!

Absolutely agree with this.

Really hope online parents evenings are here to stay for my DCs secondary school.

I like face to face because I find it easier to communicate face to face, but I also like online because then I don't have to physically go to the school, potentially having to take younger child with me, so not sure which is better.

But for getting to know the teacher, my school does two different kind of parents evening - near the beginning on the school year there's a parent evening where all the parents go at once to meet the teacher together and learn about what the children will be doing over the year (and last year the teacher made us all play tag and follow the leader with our children because he's a cruel PE teacher don't know what he did this year because I forgot to go) and then early in the spring term there's the individual parents evening/afternoon meetings to find out how your child is doing, but the meetings are spread out over the week rather than on one evening so less time pressure.

Only tech issue we had was for some reason my camera never seemed to work on parents evening 😂 Had to switch it off very quickly before ds saw me doing it.

That's just rude.

Absolutely the opposite! Because I work full time I have limited opportunities to visit the school, speak to the teacher in person etc plus no open days, nativity etc due to Covid. Lots of the working parents in DD's Y1 class feel the same

Ughh, reply fail. That was a response to the poster who suggested only SAHM are interested in F2F

Yes YABU why would you assume they are the parents you describe? I expect there are many different parents who prefer face to face and many different parents who prefer online.
Horses for courses.

Yes, you can't just assume that each parent only has one vector that's driving their preference - nor that anybody is being deliberately selfish by expressing a preference, even if it's not the same as other people's preferences.

I can see the good side to both: it's handy not having to go out at all; but at the same time, it seems so cold. We've had previous years with tech issues, so it's so easy to just arbitrarily lose your valuable parents' evening just like that - gone.

Also, the auto cut-off is really unfriendly. I realise that they have to keep to time, but you can end up gabbling in the closing seconds and there's no leeway for literally two or three more seconds to close things off properly like humans would do. Granted, it's 10 times as long, but It always reminds me of phone a friend on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, where you have to get straight to the point, without any real niceties, and then you can still get cut off before you can even fully say "Thank you - bye" at the end.

This a million times over.

I can't do online. I ask then to call me instead. Calls aren't great either because I'm also deaf but it's better that zoom.

Online works really well imo, especially for secondary which is a bit of a logistical nightmare. With online everyone knows the teacher WILL move on after 5 mins (or whatever it is) so no over running, which then affects everyone else’s appointments, has a knock on for other teachers etc.

I think there can be a benefit in face to face for primary where it’s quite nice to go in to the school, see their books etc, and meet their one and only main class teacher (obviously I know there are TAs and cover). But everyone needs to understand the teacher has to stick to time.

I disagree. I learned a lot more about my ds when things were back to face to face.

No because its a slippery slope to everything going online.

What next no school
Just learn online?
People managed Parents Evenings before Computers.

I am a secondary school teacher and much prefer the online parents evenings. The cut offs have been wonderful as, more often than not, some parents can really go on and on (so can some teachers)! Sometimes we have more classes in a particular year group so the timings help to limit the time we are working. I once had 4 classes in one year group for a F2F parents evening. Whilst parents evening ended at 7:30, I was still sat in the hall at 8:30 with a huge queue of parents. Didn't get home till 10pm that night and had a very hoarse voice the next day. The same thing happened 2 weeks after with another year group.

Understandably there will be some students where more time may be needed or they weren't able to log in so depending on the type of conversation needed, I will offer a phone call on another day or send an email home with my feedback. Or if it's more serious, I'm happy to have a F2F meeting with the family on another day.

I think it's nice to be able to meet teachers F2F but don't think it's doable when some teachers do have literally hundreds of kids to see in one evening, and multiple year groups of parents evenings in the space of a few months (on top of open evenings etc). Perhaps it's more doable in primary school as they only have one class?

Also, some teachers are more than happy and understanding to have a longer conversation over the phone or in person on another day if you let the school know if your needs.

luckily they’ve been scrapped in all our schools. There’s always IT issues, teachers seem to talk without enough time for questions, sometimes you don’t need 5 minutes, sometimes you need 7.
it’s really impersonal.

Same

I HATED online parents evening, both times the software the school used was awful. We endured struggling to hear about our children and then when it eventually worked we were just cut off as we'd reached the 7 minute limit. It was extremely frustrating, and in my opinion created a negative opinion of the school. When we complained to the school we were told it was our fault, due to the technology we were using. ( fibre broadband, and a 1 year old top spec laptop, that was used for teams, zoom, etc with no issues)
This year it was lovely being in class at a time that suited us, meeting the teacher and being able to hear what they were saying and getting to look at examples of their work. I learnt a lot more about them in that evening than I have in the previous 2 years. Our children also loved that we had been in their class, and looked at their jotters etc.