Schools engaging with working parents - any creative ideas...?

[Pheckwittageisms]

Hi - I'd love to know if there are any (state) schools that do this well? If so, please please please tell me what they do well and how they achieve it. I'm approaching insanity with the ridiculous number of meetings/info sessions/assemblies during school time which I can't attend because it means taking a half day off to be there for 20 minutes at a time. If I was going to everything timetabled for the next 2 weeks for both children, I'd practically need a holiday from school in order to go to work. Guilt and upset children aside, there is a fundamental lack of appreciation for what it's like to try and juggle this stuff as a working parent and although I'd dearly love to be there more (and this is all positive stuff they're doing), I can't manage it on top of trying to coordinate school hols as well. now that I've had my toddler tantrumI'd like to make some positive and creative suggestions rather than just rant, so just wondered if anyone had good/creative experiences to share? Inspire me with your wisdom! Thanks so much.

Well my school consider parents "evening" to be between 9am and 3pm.
Cancel clubs at the last minute.....and don't notify you until 3pm.
Decide to set a themed fancie dress day and tell you 72hours before....

Sooooo not doing them is a good start.

CookieDough many parents refuse permission for their child to appear online and there are others who can't be videoed/photographed for safeguarding reasons making it very difficult to do as you suggest.

Our staff offer appointments to suit parents (not one day designated as parents evening ) it can drag out over a month. We also do telephone consultations but this does mean books and other work isn't shared.

Rangirl
"My DH and I work from home and if they call and get him they always ask to speak to me Why ?"

Because you name will be the name that is under priority 1

My DCs primary did this pretty well.
They always had two days for parents evening, one 3:30-6 ish, the other 6-8 ish. And the " if you can't make it we will make an appointment". This also meant the teachers could see the end in sight and eat.

They produced an over view of the year at the beginning, and it was obvious from the topics roughly what kind of costume would be needed (Romans, Tudor etc.). Otherwise there was the Christmas play, which usually had easy to improvise costumes (Hawaiian Angels was the most taxing), more complex ones were made by volunteers/TAs in school (tube train door), or they had costumes for (wise men).
If there was another costume needed they tried to give 2 weeks notice.
Assemblies are trickier, but lots of people rarely had parents there.

I did object to: Grandparent's tea (our Grandparents lived 100+ miles away and weren't in good health), and drop in learning trails - which even as a SAHM were torture for me.

DD's school is half good. They go a termly google calendar but don't keep it updated through the term so I've sent DC in before in a costume for Tudor day (as per the calendar) to find it moved by a day which was on page 4 of the last newsletter under the menus.

Last week DD had a sports event for which she was reserve. She found out that she was competing with 24 hours notice and with less than 23 hours notice that parents could watch. I can't get time off with that sort of notice so sent her off in a total state and sick with nerves about how she would be last in everything.

There are lots of ways in which schools could improve (and its not all about teachers having to be at schools in the evenings):

Advance notice (ie a calendar at the beginning of term) of all events and homework allocation and completion dates.

Limit the number of dress up days, cake bakes, whatever to one a term. It won't effect anyone's KS2 scores I promise you.

Communicate via email/website rather than letters, noticeboards at school or telephone (you know, like the rest of the working world does). Non-electronic forms can be available for the minority who might need it.

Before requiring attendance by parents to anything, ask yourselves, is this really necessary? What is the value in it? Will children really be adversely affected if we don't require attendance? Limit to once a term unless there is a cast iron rationale.

Parents evening should only be for those who have concerns about their child (or where the school is concerned). Not for every parent to have to sit through a mandatory 3 mins of generic comments (after waiting 30 mins) that tell them nothing that couldn't have been covered in an email. Just because that's how its been done for the last 40 years.

Seriously, how hard can it be to make these sort of changes?

it was obvious from the topics roughly what kind of costume would be needed
But why do they need to dress up for every single thing, multiple times in a term? And how do you know when exactly they will be dressing up?

As for Christmas, we had about 6 weeks notice for our nursery play but one year it was a "Christmas story" theme and the next year a "Father Christmas and the reindeer" theme and even within those your child could have been a sheep, an angel, a shepherd or a reindeer, an elf or a child receiving presents. So if you only had a week's notice even if you already knew there would be "a Christmas play" then again, what are you supposed to do?

Limit the number of dress up days, cake bakes, whatever to one a term. It won't effect anyone's KS2 scores I promise you.

Yes, this. Absolutely.

Before requiring attendance by parents to anything, ask yourselves, is this really necessary?

And this. This is one thing that our nursery IS very good at. I can imagine that some school-based nurseries follow more of a school pattern, but we have the Christmas play (only for 2y+, and with one Jan birthday we got away with it when DC1 was nearly 2) and a "graduation" ceremony (I suspect that DC1 would be more than a bit fidgety during this and I also suspect that we may be away that day). So that's two events a year, and one of them is only for the oldest children, and the other is nearly at the end of the working day (4.30 pm I think).

A nice nativity once a year for EYFS, a concert for the older children, a single sports day, and a leavers' assembly. All with an evening alternative (except sports and the single assembly for one year only). Job done. Everyone's parents, pretty much, can make it to school for one of the two events each year and almost everyone for the assembly.

There are a couple of things at our nursery that children are invited to but must come with a parent if it isn't their regular day, for the sake of ratios, but DC1 has always managed to be in on that day apart from a couple of things that are not that exciting (a "Christmas Dinner" I seem to recall), and DC2 is too young to notice.

My DCs school only had 3 topics a year, AND only one of these I nvolved dressing up.

So how much notice did they give that this particular one would involve dressing up/type of costume/date required?

I'm not making Roman togas or Victorian urchin costumes on spec!

Our primary has been really flexible about parent's evenings. Or rather DDs teachers have been. I'm away for work 4 days a week so I can only do Fridays. When there are never parents evenings obviously. But the teachers have always been willing to schedule time for us to go in just before school starts or straight after school on a Friday which means that we can both attend (I work from home on a Friday so I can plan my day around things like this).

For the rest, I've just accepted that I'm not going to be able to go and that my DH will have to. We are lucky because MIL is just around the corner and is retired and happy to babysit as needed.

Our school website has a Blog by each if its teachers. At least weekly dds teacher posts relevant info (this is what we are focusing on this week / the phonics letters / upcoming events etc) and again weekly a roundup of stuff theyve done with photos. Its brilliant!!

I found both Infant and Junior schools quite good with communication. I think both are conscious that parents work and that also dads are interested in coming to events and wanting to know what is going on.

At Infant we had the majority of assemblies etc straight after drop off, 1/2 hour max. They had a bit more 2pm information meetings but really important stuff was always in the evening, normally 7pm onwards. They give plenty of notice, 2 weeks min, for large events around 1 months.

Juniors - we have a lot less showing off-events. The information events are always in the evening, mostly 7pm onwards. Assemblies and concerts are normally at 2.30pm. Not very good if you work but it is twice a year so DH and I normally cover one each. DD also knew from the start that mum and dad can't do everything all the time.

Communication - all via Parentmail and back-up on the website. Newsletter each month with an updated calendar. Payments can be done via Parentmail and for PTA events online now as well. PTA meetings are during the day but they are publishing everything via Parentmail as well and they have an email address for anything you need to raise.

School itself is happy to do email communication, normally you get a reply during the same day unless it is something more serious where a teacher/head has to come back to you but you always get an acknowledgement with an indication when you get a proper answer.

Our school has gone backwards in this regard under the new headmistress. MY son is in reception (also have a DD in yr4) and he has parent 'evening' this week with appointments available between 9.30 and 3.30. Thanks for that.

I am lucky that DH is a house husband so can go but I actually wanted to see his teacher as I know that DH will just say that the teacher says he is doing fine and we have nothing to worry about whereas I really wanted to hear the detail rather than DH's brief summary.

Millionprammilies we tried having priority parents meetings but some parents of very able children complained and said they wanted to sit and listen to the teacher say how well their child was doing ... You just can't please everyone so have to try to please the majority (or as it seems sometimes those who shout loudest )

Our school is improving with communication but there is still lots of room for improvement. We now get a termly planner but some things will be missed off. They tend to get a lot of the dates wrong too. The letter might say Wednesday 22nd March so you have to check if they mean the Tuesday or the Wednesday.
I am a SAHM so daytime things suit me. Our school have issues getting parents involved no matter what time they arrange them.

I don't understand how secondary schools inevitably manage to have parents evening in the, erm, evening, but it's so hard for primary schools! My DH is a secondary school teacher and several times a year I have to come home from work very promptly to look after our DC so he can be out at parents evening. Which is of course I do because it would be ridiculous to expect parents of secondary aged children turn up between 9am and 3pm.

Back to the OP, I agree with a PP that one specific thing is that schools should send out information in written format which is given out at information events, so that parents who can't attend the event do still get the information. I know many teachers are parents, but some of them seem to forget that entirely as soon as they walk through the school gate (am I allowed to say that since I am married to a teacher!). Or maybe it's bad at my DD's school because the headteacher is a childless spinster. OTOH, you clearly don't have to have personal experience of something to be able to put yourself in someone else's shoes!

Wigeon the school my Dd has now left had all parents evenings 9-3. This was secondary. No appointments would be made outside these hours.

The problem with parents evenings is that the time between is "trapped time" and so therefore needs to be counted in the 1265 hours of teachers' contracts. So therefore if school ends at 3:30 and the parents' evening starts at 6pm, the 2.5 hours in between would need to be counted in the hours, despite the school not benefiting from it.

No washed iris that's not what I said!

I never go... No stress...

We had priority parents evenings in the first few weeks of each term for those children we considered a concern and a parents evening for all parents who wished to attend at the end of each term. Some parents of very able children wanted to attend both (six parents evenings) plus individual consultations when needed.

Our school is not perfect but they are trying. We have a weekly newsletter and big productions such as christmas and Easter ones has usually two performances, one in the afternoon and one in the evening. For parents evenings and some performances they organise a teacher to look after siblings in one of the classrooms.