A Guide to Virtual Parents' Evening

Over a year later, while many of us are moving on from the pandemic and looking towards the future, its aftermath continues to make waves across the education sector affecting everything from teacher vacancies to schools adopting four day weeks in some parts of the world, and will no doubt continue to do so for many years to come.

Prior to the pandemic, parents’ evening was considered to “have long sent a shudder of midweek panic through busy families” according to Liz Laybourne from Burgess Hill Girls who was quoted in a recent article about keeping parents’ evening online. There’s no doubt that this opportunity which has arisen from the pandemic has its benefits as well as its challenges, which is why we have put together this guide to make running your online parents’ evening as smooth as possible.

How to make virtual parents' evenings a success

When two teachers were interviewed by Tes Magazine on the future of parents’ evenings, there was no resounding argument against the proposal, though it was noted that there are a number of considerations if schools decide to move forward with this approach permanently.

Tom Shrimpling, a Year 3 headteacher and assistant headteacher said the success of a virtual parents’ evening is down to finding an appropriate parents’ evening system where staff can “set their availability for the parents to choose from and add breaks in, while the in-school administrator could set time limits for the meetings so that each one only lasted for the allotted time” – this is key and alleviated much of extra work compared to in-person sessions.

Furthermore, this hybrid parents’ evening arrangement can be supplemented by more informal in-person open evenings where parents can visit the classroom and see their children’s work. The virtual meeting gives parents and teachers the chance to speak privately about any concerns or developments, whereas the classroom session is a relaxed affair – it’s less critical for busy parents to attend and teachers have less to prepare for.

Dr Emma Kell was recently interviewed on how to ensure quality communication is maintained in virtual sessions and recommends keeping it personal – parents are usually more interested in “a child’s sense of humour, anxieties, idiosyncrasies or gestures of kindness” whereas academic attainment is more fitting for a written report. If parents do want in-depth information about their children's academic success, Dr Kell recommends pre-recording certain elements of the sessions, to reduce repetition and make sure there is enough time within the session to talk about pupils holistically.

In theory, a well-organised virtual parents’ evening can encourage an exchange of information, rather than a one-sided chat. As well as being an opportunity for teachers to update parents on their children, parents’ evening sessions can be a chance for educators to learn more about the children they teach, such as what’s going on at home and other external factors which may be missed within a busy school day.

The benefits and challenges of a virtual parents’ evening

Tessa McLaughlin, a head of history, acknowledges the positives of virtual parents’ evenings for teachers which include relieving pressure associated with over-running appointments; parent-teachers working from home without booking childcare; and in-person contact being lessened for staff who are still conscious of the ongoing risks of the pandemic, but there still are challenges online sessions present. “For some parents, online appointments simply may not be possible if they don’t have access to a smart device at home” says McLaughlin.

There are also more nuanced elements of communication which can be lost over Teams, Skype or whichever school communication software is being used. Different studies suggest that between 90% to 55% of communication is non-verbal and body language is notably difficult to interpret and convey over video conferencing. Though now almost three years into the “new normal” (the first known case of Covid-19 was identified in December 2019) society is perhaps evolving to be more open in calls and there are various ways of improving body language in online meetings.

Naturally, taking parents’ evening online cuts down on one fundamental thing – paperwork. According to a recent study, schools in the UK spend an average of half a billion pounds on paper each academic year. There are many reasons why your school should go paperless, not least the risk of missed parents’ evening appointments and letters getting lost at the bottom of school bags.

There are a whole host of other benefits to hosting a virtual parents’ evening which includes but aren’t limited to:

Convenience: if parents are working late, working away or are even separated from each other, virtual sessions mean everybody can join parents’ evening at the same time.

Confidentiality: with no queues of parents hanging around, children’s specific needs can be discussed in private.

Control: keeping everybody on topic and on time is so much easier without in-person distractions. Timeslots can be adhered to more easily which means less additional work for teaching staff.

Engaging with hard-to-reach parents

Everybody invested in a child’s education is busy – whether a teacher, parent or guardian. On top of busy workloads and personal commitments, it can be difficult at times to engage with parents.

A former Year 6 teacher, Helen Shakespeare talks about adopting a child led approach to improve parental engagement in virtual parents’ evenings. “The child makes a video of him or herself talking about their successes and their struggles and their hopes at school” which can form the basis of an online meeting. This approach “is more likely to urge the parent to be involved” because the child is involved in the meeting and will ask parents how the conversation with their teacher went.

Parents can also be kept more involved in their children’s academic attainment if schools use online learning platforms such as Education Demand which makes tracking and monitoring progress easy thanks to automatically generated reports. Teachers don’t need to meet as frequently with parents and guardians if they are able to see how their child is progressing at a glace via these online learning content and assessment tools.

Tools like My School Portal not only offers a parents' evening booking system, it can also handle payments for things like cashless school meals and school trips – parents that don’t have to worry about small day-to-day matters have more time for what’s important.