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.

So you want teachers to stop teaching so they can spend all their time meeting parents, or spend all their evenings meeting parents?

They have a life and need time to actually teach children

And no I am not a teacher myself but they do teach more than just your child

Not in my experience.

I work in a school and most of our teachers teach 2/3 subjects that cover all year groups so imagine that for parents evening. As someone pointed out, try and go for the teachers you think you desperately need to see and email the rest for an update, I’m sure they would be happy to oblige. I don’t think I managed to see all of the teachers in one par.eve in 16 years of attending parents eve with my two, my daughters school only allowed us to choose 6 and pastoral care if it was needed.

Our school sends out a email telling you what date the appointments will be out always at 7pm. I make a list of top 6 I want to see followed any other teachers think the school sets a limit of 8. Normally get them one after the other though am on at 7pm and off by 7.02.pm

Lol when I was at school we didn't even have parents evenings. My teachers then would often teach every year group at the school (Yr 9, 10, 11) with 4/5 tutor groups per year. Hundreds of kids per teacher. Chances are if a teacher needed to speak to you then they already would have. Lesson learned for next time! Get in early to book who you want

Wow 12 teachers in secondary school, that’s a lot isn’t it?

How many do you expect?
maths
english
a foreign language
art
drama
music
pe
home economics
computing
technical
geography
history
politics

Why do you need to see more than 4 or 5 teachers? I think we ended up seeing Maths, English, Geography and History in Year 7. Should have seen science as well but they were off sick on the day. 5 mins each with about 2 mins taken up asking DS what he thought about the subject as school recommended he be there. DS has SEN, not sure we learnt that much we didn't already know other than that his Geography teacher hadn't read his SEN information. It was really a waste of time.

If you have particular concerns in a subject then send the teacher an email. Otherwise, no news is good news. My parents only ever went to one parent evening the entire time I was high school. I got good grades and positive comments in my reports, so it was a waste of everyone’s time.

If there’s a serious problem, you’ll have heard about it before now.

Many options teachers (and even some core) teach more than one class in a year group. They’re not going to be able to have 60+ appointments in an evening.

@museumum

> Genuine question - my eldest in last year of primary - is there any point going to parents evening in secondary? I’ve always felt I had to go to show I supported the school / teachers. But if our child has no issues should we stay away and leave appointments for others? That feels “wrong” to me but then I am a bit of a goodie two-shoes when it comes to school….

If they are doing well in all their assessments and there are no problems then don’t bother. You won’t get any extra brownie points from the teachers.

It’s when the teachers are super keen to talk to you that there’s a problem - probably means the student is underperforming or badly behaved!!

[edit. Sorry I couldn’t work out how to quote someone’s post in reply]

The children are there (at secondary) and should hear the praise.

What am I reading?! I wasn't allowed to attend parents' evening at my school.

A teacher can't refuse a meeting with a parent, unless there's an issue, in which case they have another teacher in the meeting.

Also better for parents with disabilities as not all schools are accessible.

Can I just add another layer of difficulty, I used to be a supply teacher, sometimes for quite a long time, maybe two terms, but usually I was not included in the parents evening.

The students may not know that I was supply and I was always willing to do parents' evenings without being paid (supply is fairly good pay).

My child is in year 10 and I’ve never got to speak to all the teachers. It’s fasted finger first ones the slots are released! And be great full of 5 min appointments, we had 30 second one online in year 7-8 and a whole mega 1 minute in year 9!! Then you’ll get a least one teacher who doesn’t show do to “poor wifi”.. that’s the post Covid world I’m afraid

At our secondary school you get get 6 appointments only and obviously there are more teachers than that so you pick the ones most important to you/your child. So I always go maths, English and a science, then now he's in year 10 his gcse choices. I love the 5 min Zoom appointments- much prefer that to traipsing around a packed hall!

I'm confused to hear teachers saying appointments are pretty pointless (whilst saying they attended their own children's). Points to the fact they aren't totally pointless. (Not to mention the fact that if there truly is nothing useful to say then there must be a lot of children working at a very high level).
"Efficiency" presumably is only being measured from one angle. I guess unless you've got a data set where you've observed the difference in achievement/morale between children when they have been seen versus them not being seen, nobody can really comment on the impact these appointments have. Children are becoming more and more disengaged and things like this won't be entirely unrelated I'm sure. I've just finished some behaviour training and you always hear time and time again that personal relationships are key... and then you see things like this slipping by the wayside. I appreciate the logistics can't be at simple as they used to be but there's at least one example in here of a school who has found a way around that. Presumably because as a school, they prioritise that kind of thing. Obviously that solution won't be without its problems and you can't please everyone (clearly the limited spaces solution isn't pleasing everyone either). It would appear workarounds are possible if the school is willing to be more creative (if they value the pastoral side of things).

There just isn't enough time. There isn't enough time because they're aren't enough teachers at all.
I have one extra group on my timetable to what I had 15 years ago and I'm now a head of department. Pretty much every department in every school needs at least one more teacher for things to be manageable. And yet, we're struggling to find enough staff for these new levels.
The state of schools is shocking. I've been teaching since 2002. This is the worst it's been in my career.
There aren't enough teachers.

We use to have that system during covid and wasn’t the best I only tend to stick to the core subjects and any that I feel is needed and try and get them as soon as I can. been many occasions not been able too and if I feel I needed to have an appointment would schedule a call with the teacher alternatively and not been a problem and same vice Versa if I couldn’t get an appointment and a teacher needed to speak to me she would give us a call so don’t worry too much you’ll get the grasp.

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

Teachers can do that here. You open up an appointment app and hope your name isn’t already next to a teacher!! Even worse there are HOY slots prebooked and Head Teacher slots.

The relief is real!!

I haven’t voted because while YANBU to wish it was different, but sadly this is the reality of senior school parents evening and always has been. It was the same when I was in school, 40+ years ago . In the days before online appointments, we used to scoot around the school and spot the teacher with no one sitting in front of them. Now, that’s not possible, as all appointments are on Zoom. At least they don’t run over time.
one thing that increases demand, is separated parents who want separate appointments (yes, it happens all the time), which I think is wrong.

5 mins? We got 2! One teacher turned up over a minute late meaning we got about 45 seconds!

Yanbu. Our parents evening is face to face but you book slots on line, I have never had an issue and always get appts with every teacher. Sometimes, an appt goes over the five minutes ( with children before you etc), putting you behind for your next slot. But the teachers are flexible and if they happen to not have a student in front of them as you are walking past, you can just sit down and have your appt outside of your allotted time. Much easier to do them face to face.

Our parents evenings are 4pm until 7.30pm online.

I get two 5 minutes breaks.

If I have to see more than one class then any parents that can't get an appointment get a phone call at a later date.

Parents are not expected to see EVERY teacher. Perhaps choose 5 or 6.

You do realise teachers are humans right? I once missed a parents evening because I was having a miscarriage. I'm so sorry I didn't turn up for those parents but I was a little preoccupied with losing my child.

What? All parents need to speak with their child's teachers. Parent's do not need 'speaking to' What a negative post.