Tutor Days?

[Pythianlegumes]

I should be at school today. Preparing for my 5 important AS exams this month with fully qualified professionals rather than my old notes and boring textbooks. However, the school has designated today 'Tutor Day'. No-one in the whole school goes into lessons, but stays at home and goes in with their parents for a ten-minute meeting with their form tutor (who obviously knows very little about them having spent only brief 20-minute sessions spent mostly giving announcements). Does anyone else have this at their school (or more likely their DCs school)? Am I right to think that this is a complete waste of my time, teacher's time and parent's time? The teachers themseles don't like it, the only reason the school started was because a few parents complained that other schools were doing it and why couldn't our days be wasted too? Can I have other people's perspectives on this? My parents talk to me about school and know far moe than I or my tutor could tell in 10-minutes. I know other parents might know less, but the form tutor still cannopt tell them anything that their child is unwilling to and for those few parents, couldn't these meetings be arranged after school while a normal school day goes on?

My Dc's school does this twice a year. (they call it review day) Agree - total waste of time. If I ask any questions about specific subjects or policies the tutor always tells me to contact the relevant teacher or manager for that area.

More useful are the subject evenings where you talk to the actual teachers - but your child has to run around for weeks booking those (and often all the slots are taken) and you only get 5 minutes. They are after school .

I'm glad to see my family are not the only ones who can see that it is pointless. Do you think writing a letter would do any good? I certainly can't see the headmaster listening to me (even though I'm going to be a deputy head-boy soon).

Our school used to do it but due to various pressures have stopped.

You should go with a complaint via the school council. Your parents might want to express their frustration with it via a Governor.

We used to have two of these, its now one and one with appointments to see subject teachers. For some people the Tutor day can be helpful, that is those pupils who have pastoral needs. However as for one of my DC, on the recent form tutor day, the tutor (who sees them rather more than yours does) spent half the time talking about the other pupil in the lass with the same first name, so yes it was a totally waste of time.
However subject teacher day was very very useful.
However if you are in sixth form, you should be doing a lot of private study anyway, so it should make little real difference to your learning. My DCs school also makes provision for pupils to go in to school to study/catch up.
So rather than moaning on Mumsnet you should be: consolidating your notes, going through past papers, reading around the subject and so on.

DS2's High School seem to have dropped these, thank goodness. They were a gobsmacking waste of everyone's time - in our case the appointments were 7 minutes long so you'd have to be there at 2.21 or something silly. And yes, other than "DS2, you're doing well. Except in PE but we think that might be to do with your Dyspraxia" very little was said.

Now, though, they have "training days" where normal business is abandoned in favour of "team building" within form groups or additional PHSE stuff or someone talking to them about possible careers etc. Much more useful apart from the team building - the form groups are not the same as learning groups so they meet at registration and that's about it.

And the Head should listen to you, as should the Governors. Write, definitely. It shows initiative and that you care about the school community - it could be the one small push they need.

My DD has one of these on Friday.
Total waste of time.

My school has 1 per year. Quite useful in terms of chatting about everything that's going on at school, general progress, extra curricular activities, things coming up like Options or GCSEs. Last year's targets are reviewed and new targets set, a bit like performance management at work. They're as useful as the information provided to the tutor, tbh.

Having it in January in exam preparation time does seem stupid though. I'd be annoyed if I missed sixth form teaching time just before a module for a review day. That said, most of your exam preparation should done independently and lesson time just used to query outstanding issues or go through tricky questions with the teacher.

'So rather than moaning on Mumsnet you should be: consolidating your notes, going through past papers, reading around the subject and so on.' Who the hell are you to speak to OP this way?? How rude??!!

My ds's school has 2 review days a year and my dd's school has 3. I have long complained that they are a complete waste of time.
I asked my nieces -they have 'target setting' by finishing 30mins early each day over the course of a week, and you stay for the day that your appt is. Much less lesson time is missed, although the time wasting target setting is still able to tick the "involving children in their learning" box when the Gvmt is checking up to see what it wants to see in schools.

"who obviously knows very little about them having spent only brief 20-minute sessions spent mostly giving announcements"

Really? How little you know.