Parents Evenings... how does your school do theirs?

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Full disclosure. I want to change ours Ours is a shit system. (Not mine) Teachers are in a room.
Parents turn up and queue for a teacher. No appointments. No time limits! It has been known for some parents to spend 20+.minutes...! Runs for around 3 hours.

Hummm, whilst I can almost see the appeal, there are a number of practical concerns:

• How many children are in your dcs' year? At my dc's school theres not a chance there would be enough desks for all the parents!
• I'm also wondered how teachers would manage their paperwork: at our parents eve, each teacher has a number of files summarising each child's results; key notes; often a set of resources for those who might need more help etc. Dragging that around and then finding the right bits for each child would be a hassle I think.
• Plus how would the teachers find the right parents amongst the hundreds of them? At least with finding the teachers, at our school they are organised into subjects so you can narrow down where you are heading!

Our school: 5 minute appointments, made online. Definitely privileges those who leap online when they open, but I think that parents who teachers are key to see get fitted in! Teachers arranged in a few rooms (lunch-halls, main hall, large classrooms) seating for parents in the middle of rooms to wait. Timings do go off occasionally, and I'd prefer a bell or something at the end of the 5 mins to try and keep people to time! But teachers are very good about quickly slotting parents in and keeping things efficient.

Oh - and there aren't enough slots for some subjects where a 1-2 teachers teach a lot of classes across the year group, esp in Y7 when everyone is keen to see all the teachers.

Binary-I think that could work! I especially like how I would be in control of ending the appointment by leaving.

Well, in theory with the regards to pupil info being available. It's all electronic. So ideally the teacher takes their tablet around.

Finding the parents is easy enough. The schedule tells you which table to go to. Eg row 3, desk 4.

However, even just having a paper based booking system and a 5 minutes bell would be a vast improvement on the free for all it is at the moment!

I’m sold!

We've got an online system with an automated booking wizard or it enables yoi to book them individually if you prefer. You can book up to 9. You set the time you are available and who you want to see and it arranges them. Ours opened over a week ago and they've got between 7 and 47 appointments left still. (Year 9) I've booked 6

Cons
Need loads more desks and therefore space, parents sitting on teachers seats chatting to other parent friends leading to lots of wasted time while teachers wait for the chat to finish, teying to find the parents, even though our school is tablet based i still tend to print some stuff off, then i only need open a couple of apps so trying to lug all the stuff around.

Both my school and my dcs do online appointments, one year group per night, both huge schools. Works fine.

DS gets a paper with Time slots printed on it. He has to go and take appointments with all his subject teachers. They ask to keep 5 mins break between subjects.

Teachers sit in a big hall, parents move from one appointment to other.

We are given 5 mins time and I was surprised how much they cover within 5 mins.

It is quick, efficient system. It works smoothly like a machine.

Ours is similar to yours. Logic being that appointment systems end up falling out of sync because someone does:
Teacher a: 5:00
teacher b : 5:05
Teacher c : 5:10

without factoring actually how thry find staff in that time.

I was done 15 mins early on my last parents' evening for 30 students.
It's an issue when you have multiple classes in a year group.

One school i worked in had no appointments but a bell went every 5 mins to keep everyone moving. I quite liked that