Parent’s evening - how long per person

[TheletterZ]

Not long home from a mammoth parent’s evening and wondered how long you take per person?

We are supposed to spend 5 minutes. I worked out my average and it was 7 minutes, which quickly adds up to a long evening,

I aim for under 5mins unless it's ks4.
If an issue is big enough to warrant a longer conversation then it warrants a call back later or follow up.

Sometimes I find some parents will quite happily see a queue build up whilst they try to go through loads of things that they would probably have never mentioned if it wasn't parents' evening.

It was year 11 post mocks so needed a bit longer than normal.

I think 10 minutes is fine.

10 minutes per pupil is unachievable in one evening. One 30 pupil class would take 5 hours. My time varies - 2 minutes for the "working hard, progressing well, everyone keeps doing what they are doing" students up to 10 minutes for the more complicated situations. I saw 42 sets of parents in 2.5 hours last week - so approx 3.6 minutes per pupil.

Ours has a bell that is rung every 5 minutes, and the time announced at the same time.

It's meant to be 5 minutes for us. Certain departments always over run. Which leaves me running late. Every time.

5 mins otherwise you are there all night!

I teach at a Sen school so only gave a small class -formal parents evening they have 10 minutes allocated but we also have drop in afternoon twice a year, annual reviews and direct messaging so parents evening is often less

At my daughters mainstream we have perfected the art of doing laps to see teachers on the list that currently have no one sitting with them or 1 sitting and no queue

Much quicker and the teachers generally appreciate it so they don't have big gaps or a late evening appointment to hang on for

We do 10 minutes per child and it’s done over two evenings (primary). My DD has 3 minutes per teacher last week-y7.

I'm secondary though for reference. 10 mins would be way too long, I would run out of stuff to say tbh!

We have 5 minute slots but as I teach so many kids I have to double book and aim for 2.5 mins each. It's exhausting!

Dd is at an Australian secondary. We have 8 minute slots with a two minute shuffle. Thus a chime goes every 10 minutes.

It’s all prebooked online and the teachers sit in alphabetical order so with luck, I can start at one end of the hall and finish at the other.