5 minute meeting with new school form teacher - is this normal?

[Vitchling]

My kid started secondary school this year and I've just been invited to a "brief meeting with her form tutor". By email. You log into the school appointment system and it gives you a 5 minute slot.

It's my first contact from the school since joining in summer (apart from the notices about payment methods, extra-curricula PE schedule and other generic stuff).

Is this normal, to just get 5 minutes? If so, how to make best use of the time? I only get alternate weekends with my kid, so it's hard to see the day to day school issues but I could really use more time to get feedback on a whole range of things.

Any tips welcome

Normal here, it isn't an in depth parents' eve. We got an overview of cat scores, how she was settling, feedback on achievement points etc.

Normal. If you have lots of questions, email the form teacher and ask for a meeting.

Yes, 5 minutes is normal. The teacher will have 30+ parents to ‘meet’ on this evening, and many more on other progress meetings.

Completely normal, not really a parents' evening thing as such but usually a how do you think they are settling in, are they organised, coping with homework that sort of thing. That is why it is only the form tutor who oversees their planner so can see they are handing in homework, getting stamps in class, no negative comments etc.

A parents' evening where you get to see all the teachers usually comes much later in the year when they have had a chance to get to know your child.

Very normal. We offer 5 mins for parents' evening and it has been the case at every school I've worked at. I have 28 in my form group. Even just 5 minutes each makes for an entire evening on top of an already long work day. If we were to offer 10 mins each that would be 280 minutes in today which is... what... 4 hours 40 minutes? After a full work day? Of nonstop talking? That's a lot.

Like others say its a settling in appointment and it only happens in year 7. Its your opportunity to raise any concerns eg Charlotte thinks she isn’t doing very well in Maths or Chris is struggling to manage homework.

Remember some subjects will only see students once a week and will have only taught your child as one for 30 for 10 lessons so subject appointments are not always appropriate at this point of the year.

Thanks to everyone for your reassurances that this is indeed normal. Didn’t know what to expect, which is why this is such a useful place for someone in my situation.

I’ll try to use the time wisely and maybe find a way to contact the teacher directly if we don’t cover all the important stuff.

If there's anything specific you want to ask, ask it first. But chances are the form tutor will be primed to go through a range of things giving you an overview of how she's settling in. Remember the form tutor is there more for pastoral matters so they won't talk in depth about how she's doing in individual subjects unless teachers have flagged particular concerns - it will be more about behaviour and meeting school expectations.

We had this, I wrote a list of things I wanted to chat about as knew if I didn’t and on the spot I wouldn’t cover what I wanted to