AIBU to hate parents' evening?

[Wonderfulstuff]

Does anyone else hate parents' evening or is it just me?

Had DC6's (yr1) parents' evening last week and I guess I've been mulling it over ever since. DC's teacher is great so this is not about knocking the teacher or the fact that they have to get through 30 appointments over x number of days. This is more questioning the value of the whole process and what it is really hoping to achieve.

Obviously this is just my experience. At our school we are given a 10 minute slot in which we are presented with a document detailing if the child is below, meeting or exceeding expectations across the curriculum. Which immediately feels like a mid year appraisal which feels like a pretty sad way to treat 5 and 6 year olds - they are either passing or failing already at such a young age.

There is no chance to reflect and ask questions about this assessment instead, for any areas that are below expectations, we are given a performance improvement plan of actions and targets. We are then sent on our way armed with yet more homework on top of the reading, phonics and handwriting that are already being done daily/weekly. No chance to discuss pastoral issues, sports, concerns etc.

It just feels like such an arbitrary process not focused on the child and their all round development but on target achievement. I guess if your child is 'exceeding' in all categories then you'll have less questions about the process but for me 10 minutes is not enough time to really have a meaningful discussion about my child's wellbeing, progress and challenges. So I just take my action plan and stress about how we are going to manage to find the time to do it all.

I guess as well I have a bit of a bugbear that there is also a general lack of understanding that not all children have hours of time each evening for supervised homework on a 121 basis as they are in wrap around childcare due to working parents... even though I'm sure many teachers' kids are in a similar situation.

I guess it all feels a bit futile and sad to me but maybe I'm alone and everyone else thinks it's super and I need to adjust my expectations and accept that these days education is just about hitting targets.

No, disliked them too. It was a tick box exercise. We knew the kids were doing well and if there were ever any issues the teachers flagged them.
Always felt like a waste of everyone’s time.

@Doveyouknow - yes my friend's school does no homework other than reading. Definitely the approach I had when going through infants/ks1 so maybe that's why I feel so misaligned with the current approach.

I walk out of my sons parents evening and cry on the way home.

ive 2 children in the same school, one in year 6, one in year 2. The parents evenings are back to back.

I go to dds (the year 6 one) and it’s all bells and whistles, nothing she needs to work on etc, all great.

then I go to ds teacher and it’s all he can’t do this, he can’t do that, he needs significant support with this, that etc, and how the teacher is extremely concerned about him etc.

he has a tutor at home, homework from his tutor, homework from school, reading multiple times a week at home etc yet progression is very slow.

i said to his teacher once, is there anything he is actually good at? No was her reply!!!

he has a part time 1-1 now, but I had to really fight for it.

I'm so sorry for your experience! And what you are writing is exactly my concern. I can't believe there isn't something that a child is good - especially at age 6/7.

I've been thinking about my dyslexic sibling and how they would fare in this current system and it's sad that they would be branded as 'below expectations' at such a young age - no reference to their emerging talents across a multitude of sports which would see them go onto play to a top level. But instead loaded up with more school work for them to struggle through at weekends etc.

I voted YABU. The meeting is to discuss your child's progress. If you have concerns about pastoral issues, sports or other concerns, don't wait for parents evening. If 10 minutes isn't enough, ask for another meeting. Or a call. Or send an email.

I understand that some parents work long hours (I'm one of them), but particularly in Yr1, the homework isn't all that onerous - draw a poster for X, write 2 sentences on Y, complete this sheet of number bonds to 10. It is also not compulsory - if you don't want to do it, don't, but you don't need "hours of time each evening" to keep on top of it. Practice the spellings at breakfast or on the way to school, read for 10 minutes at bedtime, 10 minutes for homework at the weekend. Done.

I have met some parents who seem to think they have no responsibility at all to put effort into their childs education ("I don't see why I should have to do spellings/read/do homework with my child every week") The point of the meeting is to encourage these parents to make the time to help catch their child up.

With 30 kids in a classroom, the teacher doesn't have the time to catch up all of the ones who are falling behind unless they cut out half their lessons or neglect the needs of the rest of the class. All they can do is tell the parents the areas to focus on. If they didn't, then parents would get to Yr 6 and be furious that they had no idea that their child was behind.

Agree with this.

DS2 is in year 1 and if you ask him what his day was like, he recites his usual schedule which is what we know but that doesn’t tell us how he is actually doing.

We do have an ongoing flow of communication between us and the teachers every week and they know they can let us know the good and the bad and parents’ evening is more of a looking at his progress from before and now, what he is like in class, and asking questions on what we as parents can do better and know what is and isn’t working for him.

He does get homework but they say 15 min per week of xyz, reading challenges (read with a parent every day) , or they have spelling quizzes, 6 words, where it is up to the parents how they go about learning said words. For us, we’ve made it a part of DS’s day and once he is done, he can do what he likes. It takes DS under 30 min to complete the tasks we set for him. We also include weekends and a bit more lenient but he must do something. I don’t see anything wrong with the amount and it is something he will have to get used to as he gets older. They do after school clubs at his school and now that it is warmer and we are more settled after having DC3, he will be in one. I think his school is well-balanced. Not sure if it is the same at other schools in our area though.

I've had both - 10 minutes of incredibly insightful information about my child that was invaluable. And 10 minutes where the teacher barely seemed to know who my kid was except for some marks on the sheet in front of her...

At my kids school we get a written report a week or two before parents evening, so we get chance to raise things or discuss them with the teacher in our slots. Works well; my kids have both been fine academically but other issues to talk about and it gives me chance to do so.

We get 5 minutes still online and it automatically cuts off.

@Bovrilla - yes I think sharing in advance would be very helpful. Parents would have time to read and digest, raise any questions in advance and then two way discussion.

@idontlikealdi - wow that's brutal! A friend had similar but that was secondary and during lockdown.

I would also not appreciate a parents’ evening as you describe. It’s not what I’ve had for my kids in primary - we’ve had reports like you describe but parents’ evening is a chat about the child as a whole and how they’re doing more broadly. (We’ve talked about confidence or social relationships or resilience when things go wrong, etc.) I think your kid’s school sounds over-pressurised for small children and that’s sad. It doesn’t have to be that way and not all primaries are like that.

Absolutely agree that sharing information beforehand - even if it’s only half an hour before- would be helpful.

Also having a different opportunity to look at their books - it could be while waiting your turn to see the teacher or on a different day altogether- it doesn’t need to take up any of the parents’ eve slot.

I have always taken a “cut to the chase” approach with parents’ evening. I don’t want to waste those precious minutes with waffle about this term’s curriculum or the teacher carefully trying to work out how to say any negatives without causing offence . So I tend to say “can we go straight to anything she seems to be struggling with or is causing an issue”.

At DD's they put the books out so you can look while waiting (with a sign up to only look at your child's) then I've always managed to fit both the academic side and other stuff in the 10 minutes - although usually stick to academics with DD as she has SEN so get plenty of opportunity to discuss the other stuff.
DS's just moved to secondary and they do the 5 minutes per subject which I thought wouldn't be enough time for anything but was actually really useful. And coudl see the form tutor for a chat on how he'd settled in generally.

This thread wasn't really about homework but FWIW - I dream of 15 minutes of homework a week!

Last week in addition to daily reading and extra hand writing practice we also had 20 tricky words as spelling (thankfully one of DCs strengths) and then sentences to be written using each of the tricky words. Rightly or wrongly It takes DC longer than 15 minutes to complete this. Posters etc are optional extra activities in the school holidays.

Following last week's meeting, we now have to add maths into this as the rest of the class are all working on number bonds 20-50 with a view of being able to manage 0-100 by the end of the year including multiplication and division. DC is not yet confident on 10-20. So we've been tasked with doing further homework on this. This morning, we were attempting some number games and DC stated they were useless at Maths because they can't count backwards from 50. I said that if we practised lots then they would be able to but DC was having none of it - they were useless and that was that. 6 feels very young to already know you are failing.

Maybe I just have a very behind child (although they are in ORT turquoise reading band so I thought they were pretty average) but it does all make me wonder if it is realistic that the majority of children will meet the required targets. We are a supportive family that, despite my moaning, does provide help to DC to complete their homework tasks. What about the children who don't have that support? Are we saying that those middle of the pack or lower kids are simply going to fail in their education because they don't have the resources at home to pack in the extra learning time needed. What about the children with additional needs that may not yet be diagnosed e.g. dyslexia isn't diagnosed until at least 7 and, certainly in my area, it's normally 10 plus.

Sorry long post but all of your comments have made me reflect more on this.

If parents are generally aiming for private school at secondary then they will be needing their child to be more than just meeting expectations at year 6.

Depending on how selective the private school is, they will need to be somewhere between greater depth/exceeding expectations and absolutely exceptional.

It's a lot easier to reach that by pushing a little harder each year than by getting to year 4 or year 5 and tutoring them to death.

The expectations in the "new" (it's not really that new) primary curriculum are also higher than before, and year 2 is an assessment year, so many schools focus hard on achievement in year 1 and year 2.

That having been said, some schools are much more laid back about this kind of thing than others. If you are not looking for private school at secondary and would prefer a less test focused approach there will be other primaries around you that do that.

I got interested - sorry -
so here are the curriculum expectations for maths

www.twinkl.co.uk/teaching-wiki/national-curriculum-for-year-1-maths

www.twinkl.co.uk/resource/2014-curriculum-year-2-maths-assessment-checklist-t2-m-536

I can't find any data for year 1, probably because it isn't a statutory reporting year, but for year 2 about 70% of students met or exceeded expectations.

ffteducationdatalab.org.uk/2023/07/attainment-at-key-stage-1-in-2023/

This isn't the point of your thread, but homework isn't obligatory. I have one in Y6 and one in Y1. I leave my Y6 to mostly sort herself out with some reminders, but my one who is in Y1, we do what he enjoys, and that's it.

He happens to really like maths, like I mean, really like maths. So we do maths every day (I couldn't get out of it if I tried). He's not super keen on reading, so I try, but if he doesn't want to do it, we don't do it. We were managing to read maybe twice a week together (I mean, him reading to me). Then they have to do some topical homework every half term - like a craft. We just about throw that together the night before. It's fine. It's much more important that they enjoy what learning they are doing than that you tick off everything on the list. Teachers can set homework, but they're 5! You don't have to force them to do it.

I don't find parents evening very useful and I say this as someone who teaches (albeit not in primary school). But what our school does is have several days each term where parents can come in to school at the start or the end of the day to sit and look through their books with their child to see what they're learning in school and talk to them about it. And you could ask the teachers too if you had any questions. It's maybe 20-30 minutes 2,3,4 times per term. It's actually much more useful than parents evening.

If parents are aiming for private secondary then they will want a school that keeps their child at above expected so that they have a chance at getting into their next school.
The 11+ grammar school tests for instance assume that the child knows more maths than they will have learned at state school so the children who take it need to be above expected and taught ahead of what the school teaches.
You don’t say what kind of private but say you’re in London and the other kids often go to top tier privates, then they will probably be studying outside of school too. If you work term time only, don’t underestimate how doing some work over school holidays helps.
Many schools set homework because it’s popular with parents rather than homework being good for kids. I’ve heard parents describe a school as good for setting lots of homework because in their mind that helps bridge the gap with private schools
If you picked your current school because of SATS results then chances are the school has excellent results because tutoring etc is common practice. My kids went to a school like that and kids in the bottom group got expected for SATS so were fine when compared to national results.
You have to remember that the system is designed so that some kids can’t get expected. A system where everybody achieved expected would be politically seen as dumbed down and pointless.
Education is a marathon and not a sprint. Struggling now doesn’t mean she will always struggle. Plenty of kids find their confidence later but until then it’s necessary to keep on going and not give up which I know is difficult when it feels like everybody else seems to find it easy.

No not in London so not sure where you got that from @BoohooWoohoo. I work in the City but definitely don't live there and DC's school couldn't be further from a city school. We are also in a non selective secondary area. Based on colleagues experiences I defo don't have what it takes to be in the competitive London school scene!

My comment re: private was just musings really following a previous comment. We completed our school application during covid so no up to date sats info and that wouldn't have been our driver for us anyway. Believe it or not, we actually picked the school on the basis that it had a stronger focus on fun and wasn't as pressurised as some of our other local schools. This still stands and we are really happy with the school.

As I mentioned at the start this post isn't about knocking teachers or schools for their approach in a system they can't control.

@mindutopia - I totally agree re: attending class events, assemblies etc as a real way to see how DC is doing at school. Last year it was fab to see DC enjoying their first sports day - the school do mixed teams across EY & KS1 and it was lovely to see the older ones guiding the younger children and the great team spirit.

I thought we had a pushy school but yours sounds pushier. DC is in yr 2 and they r still number bonds to 20 and only went on to 20 words to learn to spell after Oct half term. Sounds like they expect alot not in the curriculum for yr 1. Have a read of the curriculum yourself your DS does not at all sound behind (especially on turquoise book band at this stage in yr 1) but I am not a teacher...

Realise it's a bit of an old thread now, but things like 'it would be useful to get this report a week or so in advance' and 'I'd like a chance to ask questions' and 'I'd like to hear about my child's progress on things which aren't assessed such as sports, how they are socially etc' are all probably really useful things for the school to hear, so it may be worth putting this into an email for the headteacher to review, as some of that is a pretty easy fix!