How Involved Are You With College?

[Fancyteacup]

My eldest starts college on Monday, he’s had his induction day and he’s ready to start. But at 16 how much involvement do parents/carers need to have? Are we still expected to call in and report absence when they are sick like at school? We will be invited to a type of parents evening? If there are issues do the parents speak to the tutor? Or is that it now and it’s down to the young person to make their own way? I feel like I’m trying to still over see everything like at secondary school and am wondering if I’m the only parent doing so!

My experience .. they expect the children to manage everything till they don’t - then got bought into college for a meeting - I gave advice what would help . They carry on regardless .

i went to parents evening - everything discussed was ignored .. so again pointless .

My Ds has Sn’s he left but is re enrolling again . I shall leave them to it this time as it’s pointless .

You have to report any absences online.

Wondering the same.
My DS also starting and so far he seems to be expected to manage it all but I am copied in on certain emails.
No idea about absence, I guess I'll have to ask him.

My experience (3rd child going through it and different 6th forms) is that almost nothing, even though 2 of mine have SEN.
We had to fight to see a teacher once over 2 years with dd1, and got an attitude of "why are you bothering" (yes they did do parents' evenings, just didn't seem to think any parent should actually bother using them)
Dd2 made a couple of fairly big decisions which should have been discussed far more than they were and she just told them and the first thing we knew was some time down the line. (she makes impulsive decisions based on the moment). As far as I can tell they said "are you sure" she said "yes" and that was it. I think both of them were at the level that they should have at least let us know that was the case.
And I've just had to point out an inappropriate letter that was sent to ds (and one other) by one of his teachers. I only found out because they changed their mind the night before and sent a retraction after midnight, which he didn't find out until he'd done it, so needed picking up as there were no buses at that time. Otherwise I wouldn't have known. Tbf his tutor is unimpressed too, but I'd have queried it before he went in rather than after.

So expect to hear nothing unless your dc tells you.
Tbf mine are reasonably chatty at the right time; just tend to tell you the unimportant things like "sir dropped ketchup all down his shirt at lunch and it looked like he'd stabbed himself" than the important things.

We have parents evenings, reports, weekly general comms emails and have to report absences online