parents evening-waste of time?

[IreneA78]

DD is in Y9 and choosing options this month.she needs to pick 3 from art,DT,astronomy,history,geography,RE, classical civilisation ,german,spanish.DD doesn't know what to do yet.
Most of the teachers teach more than one set (year group has 4 classes) so I could only get to see 1 of the options teachers (art), so didn't really help at all with that decision.
The teachers we did see in the compulsory subjects, didn't seem to really know anything about DD.It was as if they hardly recognised her.Then said 'oh she is very quiet' and then read off her homework/test marks which we knew already.I asked about DDs spelling (english teacher-I am having her assessed for dyslexic tendencies because it is SO BAD) and the teacher just looked blank.The French teacher gushed on about how she was really really pleased with DD, and then when I looked down the lists of marks DD was just about bottom in her set.
What the heck is the point of going?

That sounds very disappointing. I would've hoped to have seen more than one of the teachers of the optional subjects.

That doesn't sound great, but hasn't been my experience.
Also, when both ds and dd were in Yr9 (diff schools) there was a separate options evening, apart from the Parents' Evening.

Parents evenings are often a problem when you are only given 5 minutes each on a strict timetable. I would either email all the teachers concerned or make an appointment to go into school and see Head of Year or whoever is the relevant person at the school.

I would phone the school, ask for the direct email addresses of teachers concerned and ask your questions. If you can't contact them this way, write a letter or ask someone to phone you. We were very lucky and got to speak to a teacher in every department we approached, albeit some of them had never taught our DD, but it was very helpful.

We found things out like:

1. You don't have to have a GCSE in history to be able to do it at A level in their sixth form. Also, you have to have done an art GCSE and passed at grade B or above to do any art subject with them in sixth form.

1. In some subjects everyone sits the same paper. In others they are assessed and some work towards the foundation paper which I understand is a maximum of a grade C pass, others do the higher paper where they have the chance of achieving higher grades. Where this happens and our DD was considering the subject, we did go back and check with the school if they felt DD would be capable of the higher paper.

1. The art and DT departments told us there would be a lot of homework in our DD's preferred subjects (it's a big school and they do 3 art and 6 DT subjects). However, they did point out they keep a class open every lunchtime for the pupils to do homework and staff are available for any queries, clarification, which to my mind is a great help.

1. DD's school are very flexible with the options they can take, they are all just listed and they choose in order of preference. The school did, however, say they do encourage children to have a good mix of subjects. They can choose six options (and get five) and they suggest a language, humanity and no more than three art/DT/music subjects.

The above points may not be relevant to you, but they were very helpful to us and may help your DD decide what she prefers.