Year 7 Parents Evening - Unavailable slots for core subjects

[User32243535]

Sorry, but this might turn into a bit of a rant.

DC (Y7) attends what is meant to be a well respected grammar school. But at the moment, I am struggling to comprehend how they have developed such a lousy system for arranging parents evening appointments.

DC is our eldest child so we were not acquainted with this system before and didn't see it coming. Basically, we received a report and then according to the report, we were advised (via dc taking a sheet around to their teachers and booking a time slot) to arrange a meeting with the necessary teachers.

DC is a scatter brain and this hasn't helped with making the arrangements but on eventually contacting their teachers for Maths and English. dc was informed that there were no available slots left. Sorry, but Maths and English are core subjects and we care about our dc's education, I am fuming that we are not able to discuss these subjects with the relevant teachers (parents evening is held on just one evening).

DC doesn't have huge difficulties in these areas but reading the report there are one or two areas for improvement and I think it is important to discuss these two subjects in particular.

Anyone else experienced similar? The system of arranging slots on a piece of paper seems outdated from the outset. I e-mailed the head teacher regarding my concerns about dc not securing appointments a few days ago and I haven't received a response and I'm not able to discuss with anyone as the school office is now closed (dc has just informed me of the situation, which I believed would be resolved today.) Quite frankly not impressed with the schools communication either right now in regard to replying to my e-mail. Grrrrh...just so frustrated!

I agree Astro.

Parents are invited and told they will get a chance to discuss their child's report. Government stipulations states parents should be given an opportunity to discuss their report in school.

On paper bar PE and art my dc have never struggled in anything particularly. They are in their third year so bar PE and art we should have never had an appointment about anything? 3 years of never seeing a maths,science,MFL or English teacher?

Why aren't schools advertising parents evening at all?Why aren't they just contacting parents directly as problems turn up?

Are

Interestingly, on scrolling round my dc's school sites I found quite a difference. The school I mentioned previously that provided a really good parents evening have taken on board a lot of John Hattie's work. He has done the biggest study on parental engagement,feedback and the impact they have on a child's education. He believes parental partnership and involvement with schools to be hugely beneficial. Pisa have also found that a parental hands on approach( not stand back) has a big impact on the attainment of 15 years olds.

I found a whole host of new measures said school provided having taken on board John Hattie and parental feedback. As regards parents they include better quality parents evenings for all and 2 additional support evenings for those that need it. There is no stand back at all. Surely parents evening should be for all parents and those that require more time due to issues should have that support in a time and place that is more beneficial.

In short surely instead of belittling and mocking parents who are trying to be involved with their dc's education we should be listening to parents and looking at ways to provide it.

As an aside it might be worth remembering that secondary has changed hugely over the years and is often very bewildering for parents. The knowledge many secondary teachers take for granted is very likely to be completely unknown to the vast majority of parents who don't work in that field.

toomany
Some of it is logistics not lack of willingness.
We run good parents evenings, have lots of open dialogue with home. One of my y11s mums couldn't make it so she gave me a call the following week. Our SEND base have additional parent meetings. Last week a ks3 student's mum called up and wanted some i fo because she's concerned so our pastoral team sent a message out, we all chipped in and someone pastoral will pass it on in one go rather than having 12 different phonecalls. On parents' evenings I also give out info for parents to suppoet learning at home and remind them that id they need anything then they can give me a call (I'd rather have sensible parents calling like reasonable adults than any more in thr minority mode of eeeh I'm fuming and am reporting mrs pops for nothinv).

It doesn't change the fact that if you have 2 full classes of 30 then you can't see them all in one evening. That's luck of timetabling. This year I'll see all my y8s but last year I didn't. That's because this year i have 24 and last year i had 64.

But surely senior management should be looking at ways to sort it out.

My dd had two parents evenings in year 7. The first in Nov was to go through the mentoring sheet with parents that all children at the school complete. We had to be there( obviously easier to organise as it was with their tutor and quick). The second in March I think was for all children and their parents to discuss ways in which they could all improve and for parents to put faces to names. They split the year( 150) in half to facilitate it and I think it ran from 4-6.30. It was superb. I have a child with Sen and saw the Senco too as she was there as a drop in and reserved for Sen kids. We weren't called up for the additional support evenings.

Frankly given the advantages to progress and results I do think clearing a couple of afternoons if needs be to facilitate this kind of thing is worthwhile. I'd far rather teaching hours were lost to this than other extra curricular events.

Parents want more involvement and partnership,it benefits children. Being told to stand back doesn't.It is supposed to be provided.

My son has difficulties in a number of classes and his teachers email me reports and updates on his progress and attitude

They are wanting to help and support him and keep me in the loop

I don't need parents evenings for fed back

But what gets cut from the directed time budget?

Any extra curriculars and revision sessions we run are in addition to directed time, not part of it so they're out

Factor in half a day of safeguarding each year. We've had our whole staff meetings repurposed to help us get through the sheer amount of new SEND training we need because we are getting more children with more conplex needs in mainstream now. We've redesigned department meetings to make them more purposeful in terms of teaching and learning. CPD time has been half given over sitting in SEND training for info which only applies to 2 children (whcih we need but that's time not spent on teaching and learning).

And then we are also 11-18 so we have an extra open evening and 2 extra years of parents evening. Add in that tutor evenings for y7,11,12 and options evenings for y9 and 11 and suddenly you've got to cut a lot to fit in extra slots.

When I worked in an 11-16 school of 450-500 students we could see everyone.
In a large core department of an 11-18 school of nearly 2000 not so much. Yes if we only have one class, not if we have multiples in a year group.

There's finite amount of time in the directed time budget. What gets cut?

That is your opinion and your choice re your child.

I think face to face time with parents and teacher is hugely beneficial. Far more so than a paper trail a child may never see.

I have a child who had Sen difficulties at primary,the face to face meetings we had were far better than emails.

He has done the biggest study on parental engagement,feedback and the impact they have on a child's education.

No he hasn't, Hattie has done a meta-analysis of the existing studies and assigned 'effect sizes' to various aspects of education. There are some criticisms to his approach as well. When you look at his results, parental involvement does come up with a reasonably large effect size overall, but when you look at a breakdown, what has the most effect from parents is high aspirations, not parent-teacher communication. We know this already - the highest performing group in this country by far are Chinese children, followed by Indian children who come from a cultural background of hard work and high expectations of children with regard to academic success.
Changing the culture of the home isn't easily achieved by sticking on an extra parents' evening so that parents who already wanted to go can get to see everybody.

Maisy I'm not privy to a detailed breakdown of your school itinery.

Off the top of my head re my dc's school- the whole school sponsored walk could go( look at other fundraising ideas), non essential trips e.g. Skiing and enrichment week(cut a day off it).......

Surely if some schools manage successful parents evenings others could prioritise it as an area for improvement and look at ways to facilitate it.

Slapping parents on the wrist,telling them to stand back and calling them entitled for wanting something that is advertised as provided and others get surely isn't the way to go.

The thing with parents evenings is that most of the time I get to see all parents who make appointments, with breaks. It's only maybe 1 per couple of years where I can't. Adding extra parents' evenings would be a huge waste of mine, and a lot of teachers' time. Not a good use of the directed time budget.

This infuriates me with my DC. The school purports to specialise in IT: surely it would be child's play for them to set up some sort of online booking system?

It also infuriates me that, even when you do book, it's utterly chaotic when you turn up. People regularly miss their slot with some teachers because others are running late, then they understandably want to slip in later so those teachers start running late. I've had a number of occasions when the teacher I really want to see has buggered off home. Again, surely it should be possible to run a system where, say, a bell goes every 10 minutes and that's the end of your appointment: if you need more time with a particular teacher, you book a separate meeting.

noble
His assertions about effect sizes correlating to X number of GCSE grades has also been brought into question too.
Any time I'm in training and someone says 'Hattie says...' I switch off.

I've had a number of occasions when the teacher I really want to see has buggered off home.
If it's after the end of parents' evening then there's nothing about them buggering off home. I've had parents' evenings end at 7pm, still had people turning up at 7:40 & then when i went home finally at 7:50 I came into school the next day to be met with a complaint that a parent came to see me but I'd 'decided to go home'. They were total arseholes and incredibly rude and confrontational. I pointed out that I would be more than happy to give any parent a call back at a convenient time if they couldn't get in but they do not at all get to be rude about me not being available an hour after the end of the evening. No doubt they were of the view I'd buggered off home.
Again, surely it should be possible to run a system where, say, a bell goes every 10 minutes
One if my last schools did this. It worked well.No appointments turn up, 5 min slots.

No but giving all parents( the uninterested,the middling and the interested)the chance to have a partnership with teachers singing from the same page and discussion re their child and their individual progress with their child in attendance gives benefits.

If not why are schools advertising parents evenings? Why are they bothering to have them at all? If nobody needs them bar the disruptive or struggling why aren't they seeing parents as and when issues crop up and doing away with parents evening all together?

Personally I think the possibility of never ever going into school or meeting my dcs teachers with them in attendance for 7 years wouldn't be that great. We'd end up going in en masses once a year say for a spearheaded on Options choices if we were lucky. What type of partnership is that?

If we are going to pay attention to Hattie (and like Maisie I don't really), this table shows where parents need to be focusing their attention.

Listen to your kids read and tell them you expect them to do work hard and do as well as they can because education is important.

Noble, in your school, are there teachers of other subjects who routinely teach far more children in a year group than you do?

Are all of them in 'minority / non EBacc subjects' - those which may be very important to some, but not necessarily important to all?

Are there any EBacc subjects - History, Geography, Languages spring to mind, but also Sciences, where a few members of staff do teach a very large number of classes? Or are you typical of all staff at your school in the number of pupils you have per year group?

Speech

Toomany No one, as far as I can see, is saying do away with parents' evenings altogether.

Everyone says that if a parent can't get an appointment with a particular teacher for parents' evening, then the solution is to get an email/phonecall from that teacher after the event to make up for it.

The insistence on an extra parents evening so that those individual parents can get a 5 minute face-to-face with the teacher instead of an email/phonecall is overkill. It would waste an awful lot of teacher time, and that time would need to be taken away from other things teachers are meant to be doing. An email/phonecall is a much better solution.

Toomanytealights
Nobody is saying you can't go or you shouldn't have contact.
This is what frustrates me when the answer to 'this situation isn't ideal' is well schools say they want partnerships so what good is it if we can't do....
It's not a perfect system but I'll come back to my original question. What do you propose gets cut from directed time in order for each member of staff to be available for every single person?

• Moderation time?
• Pastoral team meetings?
• Y6/6th form open evenings?
• Options nights?
• Safeguarding training?
• Time allocated for devising intevention/SEND/PP provision and curriculum?
• Planning time for departments so the curriculum is up to date?
• SEND training?

The thing is, you say "most of the time I get to see all parents who make appointments, with breaks. It's only maybe 1 per couple of years where I can't."

Is that experience typical across all teachers in all subjects? So while FOR YOU the current system works, are there staff in some subjects for which it really doesn't, and so on average, for the school as a whole, would it be worth running 2 parents' evenings, even if just in some years?

We get a tutor meet + 1 in year 7, 2 in Y8, 2 in Y10, 2 in Y13, 1 + a written report in other years. Essentially the staff have to do an extra Parents' evening in the years that they don't have to write reports - swings and roundabouts on the time taken. All other reports are numerical only.

cant, I'm with maths/English/Science and each parents' evening there are plenty of teachers with breaks and no one to see and when you get to the end time, there are only a tiny minority of teachers still there.
Can't speak for the other subjects because I don't see their parents' evenings, but from what I can see, Maths/English/Science don't need an extra parents' evening at my school. That's quite a lot of teachers' time to waste adding one on.

Why does it have to be any of those things Maisy? Surely there are other others you could cull time from. Other schools manage it and have exactly the same Safeguarding etc requirements.

Noble the message from some is do away with parents evenings for some i.e. those without disruptive or struggling children. They should stand back. The disruptive and struggling are the priority and have appointments reserved for them.Surely schools shouldn't be giving false expectations. If they are advertising an evening for parents to discuss reports with their teachers that is what all should get. If it is highly unlikely after reserved slots are removed that many will get an appointment it needs to be advertised as such i.e. an evening for the disruptive and struggling(with a few appointments left over for everybody else and the high chance that many will go without). That way parents won't have false expectations and reserve time in their diaries.

Ime parents will happily book time off work if it's worth their while. An appointment with the PE teacher and no core subjects isn't that for us. We get parents evening dates well in advance. We both work full time so we assume an afternoon's holiday or leaving work early with prior arrangement is worth booking. Finding out further down the line that we didn't get anything we really wanted and said time was to be spent with the lonely PE teacher would piss me off no end.

the message from some is do away with parents evenings for some i.e. those without disruptive or struggling children

No, the message is that where there aren't enough appointment slots, then the ones that there are should be prioritised for parents who the teacher wants to see. That is not doing away with an entire parents' evening as it won't be all teachers who have limited slots. It is also not doing away with parents' evenings for the teachers with limited slots as there will usually be slots free once the priority slots have been allocated.

Why does it have to be any of those things Maisy? Surely there are other others you could cull time from. Other schools manage it and have exactly the same Safeguarding etc requirements
Because as I just explained to you the demands in a school of almost 2000 students with a 6th form attached are different to a school of 450/500 without a 6th form.

Maybe they cut moderation time, but then that means they either have staff not checking assessment or they are expecting staff to do even more directed stuff outside directed time which is a sure fire way to end up with a young staff body and high staff turnover.
Maybe they cut thr pastoral meetings to termly. Personally, I'd not be up for a school that does that.

But as it stands we've redone our directed time in response to the fact we have increasing numbers of children with moderate to severe SEND needs who in years gone by would never have been in mainstream. So if you're wanting extra parents' evenings then the fact remains that we've cut loads already to respond to our changing student population abd that we are becoming a preferred school for children with SEND needs from out of catchment too. Personally, I'd take a not perfect parents' evening set up and actually be able to have a team of trained and skilled staff. A few follow up phonecalls for missed appointments is much more doable than having another parents' evening because some think not having 5 mins face to face is some sort of 'schools refusing to have partnership abd don't value parents' malarky.