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.

I think more parents would get to see the teachers they needed to if parents chose more carefully who they booked. Someone logs on as soon as booking is open and books a slot for every teacher. This will probably include subjects where their child is doing very well and where there are few areas to discuss. It would make more sense if people actually prioritised the subjects which their child found hard or where there were concerns.

I remember my first parent's evening as a teacher. One pair of parents spent 25 minutes with me - appointments were for 5 minutes.
So everyone else was delayed.

The worst part was they were complaining about what I was teaching which wasn't my choice as I kept telling them. They were teachers themselves so knew how wrong it was.

Zoom calls that cut off means that can't happen.

At my dds' school we have 5 minute zoom slots on School Cloud with a maximum of 6 teachers ie 30 minutes altogether.

I'm surprised to hear other schools using School Cloud have more than 6 teachers, as I thought that was a fixed number. Appears not!

unless you have a problematic child, you’re just going to get the same Rinse & Repeat conversation that all of the other parents have with no real substance, five minutes isn’t really long enough to have a decent conversation and if you have any particular concerns when it comes to your child’s learning you can request to speak to those teachers separate to parents evening anyway, and probably have a more substantial conversation. And then when it comes to exam times, they usually host special parents evenings in the subjects that they do exams in. We had about three lots of parents evenings in relation to the exams within a three months period leading up to the end of year 11.

Depending on how many students a teacher has it's not always possible. As others have said the teachers pay and conditions limits how many hours teachers can be directed to be working this includes parents evening so it limits the length of parents evening especially in a high school where teachers may do 7 parents evening events per year if they have a sixth form

It would be worth contacting the school to find out how many appointments each teacher has (2 hours would be 24 five minute appointments) and how many parents might be wanting to see them (one class of 30 would be reasonable, two or three classes less so). If there were concerns about your child they would probably be in touch but I understand the desire to have some dialogue with their teachers.

In the olden days, before zoom and online booking, my DS took great delight in making appointments for us as inconvenient as possible - consecutive appointments at opposite sides of the school, retracing our steps several times.

I don't think it's unreasonable to expect an appointment whatever level your children are performing at. Our school now doesn't do any reports until really late in the year - so for exam year students this would be in April & exams are early May. Mine all perform well but I still need & deserve for them to have feedback. Some kids perform well & drop off for all sorts of reasons, without the 2 x 5 mins appointments I would have no idea if this was happening to my kids. Also sometimes that 5 mins is used for asking about info related to where they progress onwards, 2nd of our parents nights is just before subject choices are made.
If parents evenings aren't long enough then the onus is on schools to be proactive about how they feedback to all parents.

Teachers didn't teach fewer pupils in the eighties, at least not in my area.

Then as now lots of parents didn't turn up. And if most teachers were in the hall, maybe those who did turn up had more awareness of the need to keep it short.

Re school cloud - our school uses this & can book all teachers, including non exams ones like pupil support, pe,re etc if you wish.

I don't think it's unreasonable to expect an appointment whatever level your children are performing at

I currently teach 125 children in our year 7. 5 minutes each = over 10 hours. How would you like me to approach that, bearing in mind I have my own children to look after and I’m a single parent?

It isn’t reasonable to expect teachers to speak with all parents unless the teacher concenrned has less students than parents evening slots.

It's only the first year.....and just a few months in. Multiply your 'expectations' x hundreds of students and they are impossible.

If there's any pertinent info that needs to be related from/to either the school or you then there are many other times in the academic year to do this.

Not a teacher, nor a parent of school age dc (anymore), just an imo.

I used to tell my students that if their parents couldn’t see me and they wanted to, I could ring them or send them an email instead. Seemed to work ok. Bit of extra work for me, but not a massive amount would take me up on it so it wasn’t too bad.

One year I taught 3 year seven classes. So this was 90 kids in 3 hours. I couldn't speak by the end of the night. I know the argument may be have more parents evenings but there is no time or staff capacity.

If there are any significant issues the school would have told you already but absolutely email in should you want an update or have any specific questions.

You only really need an appointment with your child’s tutor. They see them every morning and if there were any issues from other teachers they would know.

YABU. I’m a secondary teacher, I have 80 pupils each week from S1 (year) 7. I can only see 30 parents in an evening. You should also get regular tracking information and an annual report from every subject. If you need an update from a specific teacher, contact year head/pastoral teacher and request it through them.

Teachers are required to work a certain numbers of directed time (and a million uppaid over this), parents evenings have to come out of this ‘budget’ therefore usually 3 hours. It’s not their fault. Yabu.

Bigger classes? More classes being taught by a single teacher?

I was a child in the 80s and I didn’t get to see every teacher in the time my parents could attend the meeting as some time slots were more popular than others.

I recall a teacher tacking my parents on at the end because they wanted to speak to them.

My DD just had her first high school parents evening (same as yours, 5 minute zoom slots) but we had to choose 6 subjects and then book in - there was no option to speak to everyone.

Do you really need to speak to EVERY teacher? We chose the 3 core subjects, so maths, English and science, then her languages teacher (French) and then her 2 favourite subjects out of the rest (in our case history and dance)

Our school is fairly big (nearly 200 Y7 pupils) imagine if every subject teacher had to find 200 X 5 minute slots - it's just not realistic 🤷‍♀️

You only really need an appointment with your child’s tutor. They see them every morning and if there were any issues from other teachers they would know.

That's really not true. As a tutor, I would only know if there were a serious problem with one of my form group. I certainly would not know how well or badly they were generally doing in their subjects otherwise. Nor would I have the knowledge to advise them about how to improve in subjects I don't teach, unless I'd been given detailed notes by their teacher for each of their subjects.

I see them for 20 mins each morning, and each of those five 20 minute sessions is occupied by a specific activity. I know them fairly well, mainly because I also happen to have taught all of them.

I teach half a year group so around 120 pupils - gcse, I have about 40 slots, and that’s with no breaks (for a wee !)

I teach 217 in one year group 😂 I had 30 parents night appointments. And I’m also not replying to every single request for feedback I get as that is clearly not manageable. I’m actually hoping parents complain, so maybe I won’t be timetabled so ridiculously in future (and yes, I am the sole teacher for all those kids in my subject)

This is a fantastic summary of the issue. We could force each teacher to meet with the parent of every kid they teach for 5 mins but this, alongside all the other activities that now need to be done over and above the classroom teaching, would send most staff waaay over their directed time hours, adding to teacher burnout and not helping the retention crisis. Parents quite reasonably want to speak to every teacher but we know that the most efficient use of time is to speak to the parents of key students. We tried this at my school and parents who didn't get an invitation to speak to their child's teacher were up in arms. The solution: teachers teach fewer kids so a lot more more funding, smaller class sizes. Won't ever happen. Set your alarm next time and book as soon as the slots are released.

This really, really depends on the timetable of the teacher. I have 7 classes in the first year of high school; each one with between 30 and 33 kids.

We do give out a progress summary prior to the appointments though; with their child’s level and progress, as well as behaviour and effort scores.

I have 15 classes, there's no chance I'll ever be able to speak to 450 parents, even over the course of 5 evenings.

Teachers will usually meet you at any point in the year so you don't have to only do it on parent evenings... why don't you email them to arrange