To expect an appointment with all my child's teachers?

[ACTIVE123]

My only child has started High School for the first time this academic year.

Appointments have been made available for parent consultation evening (5 min zoom appointment per teacher) but despite looking at all slots, I can only get appointments with 4 out of 12 teachers.

I logged onto book only 2 hours after the email was sent saying appintments were made available.

I contacted the school and was told I'm on a waiting list as there are simply too many children to get an appointment with every teacher.

Am I being unreasonable to expect an apppointment with every teacher? Is this how it works at High School? Asking genuinely as I'm new to this and not sure if it's just me?

The school is an ofsted outstanding and is highly oversubscribed.

You do need to be there bang on the dot to get a slot at my kids secondary. I always set a reminder in my calendar for the morning when booking’s open and then I set an alarm for 5 mins before. I guess yes they should have enough slots for 1 per child but at our school you get a written update via email if you can’t get a slot.

edited to add we get an email to say booking will open at 6pm on 29th Feb for example around 2wks before. So then you can be ready to grab the time slots you want

In the olden days when kids walked round with a peice of paper and organised it themselves you were much more likely to get a slot as half the kids couldn't be bothered.

What is the time range given for the appointments? Are there any teachers you specifically wanted to see? I'd focus on trying to get to see two or three teachers of subjects you have concerns about.

That's awful it shouldn't be like getting tickets to see Taylor swift!

I think the teachers shod be responsible for who gets a slot. They know who's parents need speaking to

But often it’s the patents who you need to talk to who don’t bother with parents evening.

It’s because parents evening counts as directed time and there is a limit to how many hours directed time they can be given in a year, secondary teachers will have a lot of students they teach so to see every parent at every parents evening across every year group may be impossible for some teachers.
the general rule for parents evening is that there shouldn’t be any suprises so if a students parent ‘needs to be spoken to’ this is usually done when it comes up rather than kept for the parents evening.

Sometimes a teacher will have more than one class in a year group. For us at Key Stage 3 this would mean 64 students but there are 42 slots in an evening (I think). However, our staff would be more than happy to reply to an email with any questions and give feedback to anyone who was unable to get an appointment.

It would be impossible to see every child's parents. It's actually nothing to do with online, it would be the same in person.
I teach 5 year 7 groups this year, so 125 kids in total. Even with a roughly 50% attendance rate that's 60+ appointments
Our school encourages parents to make a 'hit list's who they want to see and book. Prioritise, but also remember you can send an email telling us you couldn't get an appointment as we were fully booked and request a phone call instead. I do this a lot.

If a teacher has just one class of year sevens then 30 x 5 minute appointments would take 2.5 hours. Is the Parent Consultation event 2.5 hours long? 2 hours would be more normal.

Quite often a specific teacher might have 2 classes within the yeargroup, especially if e.g. they teach two subjects and have one group for Physics and another group for Maths. Then they would need 5 hours to see everyone.

Tbh waiting for 2 hours is a rookie mistake. I set an alarm for the time they say slots will be released ang get my bookings done in the first 2 minutes.

I'm a teacher, I have 2 year 11 groups which is about 50 students. There aren't 50 appointment slots in the time allotted to parents evening. For Ks3, teachers may have 3 or 4 groups in the same year group so over 100 students. Follow up with individual teachers for a phone call or message updating progress.

It's unfortunate, but often the way it goes, especially if that teacher teaches a lot of that year group because of the way the timetable falls.

E-mail the main subjects you are missing, and ask for an e-mail summary of how they are doing.

Sometimes it’s impossible. I used to teach whole year groups a subject, so that would be 150 children. There weren’t enough appointment slots for that many.

My advice is see English, maths and then any subjects they have expressed difficulties with.

When I was at secondary school 20 years ago it was capped at 5 teachers per student. Whilst not everyone, that seemed fairer than some getting 12 and some getting no-one.

We have 8 parents evenings across the academic year - every year group and a tutor evening. They are 3 hours in length so 5 minutes an appointment, yet my largest class is 34. That will mean if all parents want to see me, 4 won’t. It’s just the logistics of schools and working on the bare minimum of staff. I’m a parent to a high school child and I don’t book appointments. I know from my child’s progress she is excelling in all subjects. I wish that is how parents evening should be, I make appointments with parents whose child need help. Have conversations with your child and check their books and progress reports. You’ll get far more out of that that a 5 minute generic rushed chat.

I had one year where I taught 5 out of the 6 year 7 history groups. I had 155 kids to see and 30 appointment slots. Most year 7 parents did not see their child’s history teacher that year. That’s an extreme example but there won’t be enough slots for everyone to see every teacher at key stage 3. You should see most in key stage 4 and usually all or close to all in key stage 5. Classes get smaller and the number of subjects reduces meaning staff tend to have fewer classes in upper years but spend longer with each class per week/fortnight.

Our parents' evenings have 5 minute appointments. The whole thing lasts for 3 hours. That's 12 appointments per hour, 36 appointments in total.
I teach 180 pupils in each KS3 year group. It's literally impossible for me to speak to all parents in 3 hours.

As a veteran of this system. next time log on immediately appointments open and choose the automatic allocation option. Doing this, I got the appointments I wanted.

(Open at 7, allocated and accepted by 7.03. Not at convenient times though so I will have to book time off work as parents "evening" starts at 4pm)

Our school has 30 slots per teacher - 330 kids in the year!

Year 11, we have never met subject teachers in person as all parents evenings have been via this system

So children who work hard and have parents interested in and supporting their work don't deserve an appointment? This is very unfair. Also, as stated before, parents night attendance is not obligatory so you may well be handing out the few appointments to people who won't come.

When I was at secondary school in the eighties, for parents' evenings, teachers sat at desks in the hall and parents queued to see whichever they wanted to. Mine were able to see all my teachers. Why is there not enough time now? What has changed?

Parents evening is 3 hours, and they run 2 per year group. That means that each teacher has 72 slots. There are 300 children in a year group and they run 3 streams, so 100 per stream. Realistically, not enough slots for everyone to have one.

We get an email to say booking is open on School Cloud. I literally tap the hyperlink, log in, click 'auto-allocate' and within 1 minute I've booked all the appointments for my child.

Not that they don’t deserve, more not an effective use of time. I don’t say anything new to parents of children who are excelling that they haven’t seen in progress reviews etc. It’s “well done, keep it up”. Great for parent to hear compliments but not an effective use of time.

Population growth and ratio to pupils is bare minimum.

I'm not saying you're being unreasonable, especially if this is your first experience of secondary school and you haven't necessarily considered the practicalities of what you're asking.

For some subjects there might only be one or two subject teachers for the whole year group like the tech subjects, music, art etc (because they have fewer lessons per week than core subjects). My secondary school has 260 kids in a year group which could mean that each of those teachers have 3 or 4 year 7 classes to manage each. Or demand for perhaps 80+ parents evening slots.

YWBU if, you you appreciate that, you still expected each of those teachers to be available long enough to give all of those parents an opportunity to chat that evening - it's a simple case of maths, even 5 minute appointments would mean they would need to be there for upwards of 6 hours to see everyone.

Rose tinted specs here. It probably seemed like they saw them all, and as others have said, in the later years this was probably true but regardless of the year, it would never have been possible for a teacher to see every year 7 child's parents. Also you haven't accounted for attendance rates etc

Teacher, just email the teachers you want to see and ask for them to phone you when it’s convenient for both of you