Our vision is for a school which will be both in the community and for the community. Dave Baker Headteacher
This week our Director of Creative Arts and I made a visit to Bradley Stoke Community School to hear how they were coordinating their parental engagement, particularly focusing on the organisation and structure of “parent and carer meetings” commonly known as “parents evening.”
Having meet with students, the ‘parent forum group,’ The Schools Network and received 80+ survey responses from our parents and carers, we are well aware of the perceived impression of our clients. Before we even started our investigations in October, we knew that we could do “parent and carer meetings” better and we were really looking forward (at least I was) to visiting a school that were “doing” it differently and “doing” it well.
At this point I would like to offer a sincere “thank you” to all the staff that contributed to our visit. We experienced a very positive day and held a number of very pertinent conversations. Our thanks to Ian Williams for organising the meetings, to the students who shared their views whilst touring the school with us. A thank you to Susie Davis who outlined the potential impact engaging with the Student Support Team can have in supporting the process and sharing with us her work of PASS. To Amanda Morton and Mark Rudman who demonstrated the digital opportunities to connect learning and communication to parental engagement through the schools website and parent portal and finally to the wonderful Paula Warren. Paula demonstrate the new online booking system and gave us a walk through from both school administrator and parent and carer perspective. Paula’s enthusiasm and unbelievable discretionary effort was possibly our highlight.
What new knowledge did we leave Bradley Stoke with?
First and foremost and without question, parent and carer meetings can be “done” better.
The first learning point was that parent and carer meetings should not be consider the priority meeting opportunity, rather a meeting opportunity. The student support team at Bradley Stoke certainly reached out to their school community.
As long as there is a conversation it does not have to be on that evening.
Monitoring student attitudes to school with PASS was a part of this process. Second, parenting and SEAL support for parenting, was a part of the school strategy.
Drop in sessions and quick answer sessions were available too, what I would describe as ‘nipping it in the bud’ support.
The online room booking service used was considered good value for money. In addition to providing parents and carers with a very simple way to securing appointments, the software automatically schedules a break between appointments and it can also limit the total number of appointments available. In Bradley Stoke’s model, a ten minute break between appointments is enforced and a maximum of five appointments per meeting. Interestingly, the reports showed that parents and carers were typically making three appointments per meeting opportunity, clearly they were only arranging meetings with the staff they had reason to speak to. Importantly, in reflection, the online system allows teachers to continue to use class time for teaching and not for recording appointments. Post event, the software provides detailed reports from which the admin can see who is and who is not requesting meetings.
Speaking with Marcus Fields at parents evening system they were very open to conversation and keen to work with schools. Excellent news. There are one or two further features we would like to see developed, some of which have already been raised Iain Williams. For example,
- the ability to set parent and carer meetings for more than one year group
- a simple tick box to define that the meeting occurred
- a comments box for parents and carers to request information prior to the meeting
- a comments box for the teacher and parent to record targets for the next meeting
- for the system to automatically recognise where a second meeting between teacher and parent is schedule, and for the system to prompt the discussion for that meeting with the agreed targets from the previous meeting
- for the software to be able to receive a CSV import from SIMS and to automatically request an appointment from parents where an attitude to learning value is below a set benchmark. here by the school can request meetings as well as parents and carers.
The Structure of the Parents and Carer Meetings.
Having surveyed are parents, receiving over 90 responses, there were key themes. The quality of the dialogue (limited in just 5 minutes), in particular parents requested that conversations focused on whether or not the child was making progress rather than focusing on levels. Concerns over privacy and suitability of using the main hall as a meeting venue, and a wish for the conversation to include how they, the parents, could support their child’s learning.
The Bradley Stoke model had already addressed the privacy issue, moving the meetings to teaching classrooms, with two or three teachers per classroom. Parents and carers reported that they enjoyed seeing their child’s classrooms / school and of course the school took great pride in their self-presentation. Second, with a limited number of meeting slots, the time given to each conversation had been extended to 10 minutes. Third the main hall was now available for;
- key presentations at key points in the year could be scheduled
- as an obvious meeting point for parents, carers and students
- as a venue to showcase some of the students talents with live music or short drama productions
Parent and Carer Conversations?
What is your bedside manner? Staff at Bradley Stoke had been through a structure CPD session on how to prepare for and hold a parent and carer conversation with a supporting script on how to start these conversations. at the end of every 10 min the bell was rung to signal the next meeting slot. Where meeting is could not be arranged, preferential booking rights were given to the following meeting or one-to-one meeting slots were arranged. It was made very clear to use that at Bradley Stoke School parent and carer meetings were not considered the only time for conversation. In addition to “traditional” parent and carer events, drop-in sessions were arranged three days a week and home visits were possibly. A final service worth highlighting was a bookable crèche facility.
Our Next Steps…
Having spoken with various school groups, our next step is to engage in professional dialogue with the staff holding these conversations, and indeed some that should be but currently are not.
We know that we could easily lose staff in the detail. What is important is that we get into the importance discussion of how parent and carer meetings can support student progress. That we show staff that we want to act upon their experiences, requirements and feedback. Most importantly however that we want parent and carer meetings to impact of learning as well as fostering improved teacher, parents or carer and students relationships.
As I am working with a very talented artist, I hope that we will be able to communicate in pictures what we have learnt so far rather than lead staff through yet another verbal presentation. We need to quickly and efficiently communicate what we have learnt so far. We need to initiate professional dialogue with colleague on how we can develop and foster learning conversations with parent and carers around progress and learning, and not reports. Reports should inform the conversation, possibly framework the conversation, not be the conversation.
As a teacher I for one was blissfully unaware of just how complex the reporting, parents and carer meetings process was. Just how significant the school investment is, in writing reports, managing the data, preparing reports, communicating, organising and leading these two highly influential learning and engagement duties.
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I do not think I have ever concluded a post with a disclaimer, but I think in this case I should. These are my opinions and not the opinions of my employer, my colleagues or the staff at Bradley Stoke Community School. (Who, by the way, were the catalyst in our conversations and IMHO, right on the money). In a community setting such as ours, parents and carer meetings need to be “for the community.” Indeed they do Mr Baker.
This week our Director of Creative Arts and I made a visit to Bradley Stoke Community School to hear how they hold parent meetinsg.