Virtual parents evening

[ODFOx]

After years of parents evenings where everyone is clustered into the school hall waiting to pounce on the next teacher on the list while scowling at the parent who takes 9 minutes instead of five and upsets the whole system, we attended our first virtual parents evening this week.

The system gave us 5 minutes with each teacher and worked out the most efficient booking order for us.
On the night each 5 minutes counted down and the meeting cut off and connected you to the next on the list at the appointee time.

In short it was brilliant; much less stressful than the old way and very focussed in the time allowed.

Are all schools doing this and how have you found it?

I'm dreading it, I don't cope well with things like phone calls or zoom at all. I would skip this year if DS wasn't year 10.

@Stokey

I actually miss the physicality of it. My eldest starts secondary this year and I think it's they stayed to virtual parents things evenings, you'd hardly ever see the school and get a feel for things. I enjoyed the ones more where you could go in and spend some time looking at DCs books and the art on the wall in the classrooms.

I haven't met either of DCs teachers in the flesh this year. Although obviously got a good impression of them during home schooling. But think you'd miss something particularly at secondary where you don't get to drop them off etc any more.

You will find that at secondary school you really don’t get to know the teachers at all - unless there are other reasons. My son has something like 12 different teachers and I wouldn’t recognise them if they stood next to me. Secondary school is fairly remote anyway.

At least this stopped the known families pushing in and demanding too much time.

@Stokey

I actually miss the physicality of it. My eldest starts secondary this year and I think it's they stayed to virtual parents things evenings, you'd hardly ever see the school and get a feel for things. I enjoyed the ones more where you could go in and spend some time looking at DCs books and the art on the wall in the classrooms.

I haven't met either of DCs teachers in the flesh this year. Although obviously got a good impression of them during home schooling. But think you'd miss something particularly at secondary where you don't get to drop them off etc any more.

In fairness, i'm not sure you get much sense of the school from parents evenings. It's nothing like a school day and most schools use communal areas rather than classrooms. It's just a load if people standing around looking a bit grumpy!

I think Open Evenings, Options Evenings, performances, awards events and things like that give you more of a sense of the school than parents evenings. You'll still be able to visit the school for things like that.

We got four minutes per teacher for year 11. Not long enough after the year we've had, particularly when one teacher spent three minutes talking about a different child with the same christian name.

Yes ours was online and it was absolutely fantastic. Hard cut off after 5 minutes per teacher, but if there was anything else we needed to discuss we'd have made another appointment.

From various different experiences of this - DH's as a teacher, ours for our son's nursery meeting with his networker, friends' reports of attending parents' evening for their children of various ages - virtual parents' evenings are about the only thing I'd like to keep from Covid times!

The admin for ours worked really well.

The auto cut off for slots meant no overrrunning. If you needed more than the allotted time, then there was option for email follow up.

It's a brilliant system, and I hope they carry on with it

We had school cloud. My DD year 8 and 10 minutes per teacher. I liked it I hope it doesn’t go back to in school

Loved it, hope it’s here to stay, as a parent none of the awkwardness when parents in front of you go over the allocated time slot, then the parents behind you turn up for theirs, I always felt like I was getting squeezed out. Non virtual parents eve for secondary are like a bun fight to get to see each teacher - hated it! Nothing at all like primary, that’s a different experience seeing one teacher and a look through the books.

In theory, yes much better, no rushing back from work, hanging around on tiny chairs etc.
However, we had ours on Schoolcloud a couple of months ago and unfortunately the whole system went down so we couldn’t see half the teachers - very stressful for the school, and meant extra work for the teachers who had to rearrange our appointments for another day (just a phone call instead).
I think it’s one of those things that is great when it works!

Dds school used school cloud too. It was brilliant, we normally have to get my mum over to look after ds, if we both want to go, but we were able to both attend. 5 minutes was fine apart from one teacher, who we emailed afterwards. The school has gone a survey, and apparently it's almost 100% positive.

Ds's school tried something on Teams, which was an utter failure.

I'm a teacher and I really hope we keep this system going
Yes it's nice to have a chit chat and get to know parents but we are all busy and this is an efficient system

I work in primary, infants and we are doing virtual parent's evenings this time.
School are investigating a system called 'school cloud' which is a video call with strict timings, so sounds similar. Will be interesting to read all the responses to see how people find it.

@annaseal

Yes OP. Exact same experience. No stressful running around from one building to another, no long queuing up. Only negative was 5 mins for me was not enough. Should have been 10. Rest super-good. Wish it stays same even after Covid leaves us for good

10 minutes for secondary would be too long to organise for staff. 10 x 30 children is 300 minutes, 300 minutes is 5 hours.

Even for parents 10 minutes per subject would be a long evening.

Another School Cloud fan here. Both my children’s schools used it and it worked like a dream.

We found it worked really well too, the teachers were well prepared for their five minutes, with a summary, next steps even allowing time for questions. Only issue was one teacher had really bad connection so we missed them but overall a much better experience.

I've had two online parents evenings and they've bothered been brilliant. So much less stressful than face to face.

I don't have to leave work early or do a 30 mile round trip or have the stress of missing the last teacher because they've gone home at 6pm and everybody else was running late.

The down side is I don't get to to say hello to other parents or see other pupils my DC talk about, but as there's been no socialising these year, I don't need to meet Sophie who my DD has a been to town with every Saturday this year, because it hasn't happened

Ours was SchoolCloud too. Excellent, and as a pp said, pretty much the one thing I'd keep that's come out of COVID times.
5 dc and over 20 years of parents evenings and they come up with this as DD approaches GCSEs and then leaves for college. Typical!

I've enjoyed doing them too. I do think I'd like an in-person appointment with my form group early in the year (say before October half term) as it helps with relationship building but that's just one slightly longer appointment per parent and could still be done virtually if preferred.
Does give less of an excuse for me to pick up a takeaway on the way home now though 😂

I agree OP, it was a fantastic way of doing parents evening and I hope it stays! It normally takes me over 2 hours of hanging around in the school hall and library, awkwardly trying not to overhear other parents and dreading bumping into "certain" parents.

I felt it was much easier to focus on what was being said and that I could address some points better as it was more confidential.

@horseymum

We found it worked really well too, the teachers were well prepared for their five minutes, with a summary, next steps even allowing time for questions. Only issue was one teacher had really bad connection so we missed them but overall a much better experience.

To be honest I really wish they could just send me an email with the three minute summary. I find zoom more stressful and struggle to focus on or remember what is said.

I also think a lot of people misunderstand the purpose of 'Parents evening'. They are for a quick catch-up on your dc's progress of which you should already be aware. There shouldn't be any big clangers or complex issues waiting to be shared at Parents' evening. Such matters are meant to be arranged as a separate one-to-one meeting allowing for a much longer appointment where you can discuss in detail. Parent evening is a short, 'Yes Johnny continues to do well, is on track, could expand his essay writing a bit more, thank you goodbye'.

I'm not told much about my DS's progress though. I get a number grade three times a year and a couple of sentences once a year, then the 5 minute appointment. I sometimes get results of tests from DS but I have no clue how hard the test was to know if it was a good score or not.

Kowari Can you not make an appointment with his teacher to discuss in more detail? they should be able to make time to see you for this sort of thing. Most teacher's are more than happy to make a bit of time to discuss gradings and what they mean, progress charts etc.

@Tonty He has English, maths, three sciences plus computer science, DT, History and RE so that would be nine teachers. I only know that English is a problem because his teacher emailed me about his work during school closures. I don't know enough about his other subjects to know if there is any need to speak to the teachers involved or not, and it would need to be important for me to take a half day off work for. It would be good if assessment results were on Edulink or similar with something to tell me what the result means. We initially get to book to see six teachers for parents evening but I have absolutely no clue which two teachers (RE unavailable) I don't need to see.