Parent-teacher interview

A parent-teacher interview (also a parent-teacher conference and parents' evenings in the UK) is a once per term, short conference between students' parents and teachers. The interview is a chance for parents to meet their child's teachers and review any issues or concerns the parents or teachers may have with child/student's performance. These interviews are usually between five to fifteen minutes long. Parent-teacher interviews are a tradition in Western school systems, such as Australia, Canada, the UK and the United States. In the United States, many elementary schools will shorten the school day by 2–3 hours (often for an entire week) in mid fall to allow extra time for teachers to give these conferences.

Current practices in Australia

Parent-teacher interview practice in Australian schools varies considerably from school to school and state to state. Each state has its own education system which may or may not mandate requirements for interviews to be conducted. Non-government schools may be controlled to some extent by federal and state education laws they operate independently in many respects including parent-teacher interviews.

Some schools have just one round of interviews per year, others have several. Two rounds is common, with terms 1 (Feb–April) and 3 (July–September) being popular times. Many schools offer multiple dates, sometimes splitting interviews by year level or by name (e.g. A–K/L–Z).

There is often keen demand by parents for times with teachers, though a common observation from teachers is that it is the parents who they don't need to see who attend interviews, while parents who should attend often do not.

Booking methods for parent–teacher interviews

One of the main barriers to attendance is the presence of and effectiveness of some kind of booking system.

  • Teachers are already very busy and are usually required to make bookings with students during break times. Teachers who want (or need) to preserve their break times end up by necessity avoiding students, so students are unable to see the teachers they need to see and parents do not get the bookings they need.
  • Parents do not have direct access to the teachers' free time list and often get times that are not suitable or optimal. Booking schedules are controlled and therefore optimised from the point of view of the teacher, not the parent. This apparent optimisation ignores the fundamental fact that it is the parent (not the school) who knows when he/she is available to attend the event.
  • The whole process relies on the students to do the booking, so if a student does not want his/her parent to see teachers, all he/she has to do is not make bookings, or leave it so late that there are no times available. Many parents do not even know about the event or find out about it after it is all over.
  • It is difficult or impossible to measure the effectiveness of the event via any statistics or analysis.
  • Optimised bookings where the system chooses the best sequence of times to allow the parent to see the required teachers within an overall time-frame that is suitable to the parent, rather than the parent simply choosing individual times to see teachers (although the latter method should always be available).
  • Flexible schedules for interviews. Schools often required interviews over multiple days, based on year/grade, boarder/day students or other factors. There may even be a need for different length interviews for different grades/classes/days.
  • Regular space time slots for teachers that allow meetings to get back on schedule if required.
  • Spacer time slots or an optional 'gaps' setting that allow parents to prevent back-to-back bookings, thus helping on-time-running of interviews (parents have time to get to the next interview on time).
  • Missed bookings where a parent can indicate to the school that he/she wanted to see a certain teacher but could not, either because the teacher was fully booked or none of the remaining available times was suitable. This allows the school to capture this information to help better manage subsequent interview events, and to contact parents where necessary.
  • Statistical analysis of bookings allowing optimisation of the booking process during the booking period, and analysis after interviews have completed.

Requirements in Ontario, Canada

Parent-teacher interviews are mandatory for all Ontario (Canada) elementary and secondary school teachers. Parents have the right to be allotted time for this purpose under the Ministry of Education.

Criticisms/issues

Canadian Living criticizes parent-teacher interviews for their class bias. Often only the most privileged children's parents will attend the interviews and the children more likely to need extra assistance will not have their parents attend.[1]

On-time running

Parents sometimes complain schedules are not running on time, causing them to miss interviews, or be cut short. This is usually due to either parents or teachers electing to continue talking beyond their booked time slot. One factor that naturally reduces this effect is the presence of another parent ready to start the next interview and clearly in view of the teacher. There are several other options that can assist on-time running of events:

Electronic interviews

Parent-teacher interviews are slightly moving more towards electronic organizational services in the same vein as other educational services and functions. This is similar to other trends in education such as blended learning. Where a parent was unable to attend a face-to-face interview at an organised school event, or was unable to see some teachers due to demand, interviews can be carried out over the phone or via common video conferencing systems, like Google Voice or Skype.

References

  1. 9 February 2008.

External links

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