Last night I had the daunting prospect of seeing 14 different teachers at parents evening. Naturally my twins do not share any of the same teachers and so this is always a very long evening. My husband was trying to get to school to help but rather unusually an accident on the M25 had delayed him.
For those of you without children in secondary school the process is not as easy or relaxed as when they are at primary. When the boys were younger I would see the teacher and would be told how they were getting on with English, maths and possibly science. If I pushed I sometimes managed to get some information on history, geography and any other subjects they were doing. After the 45 minutes wait (as they always run late) it was usually pretty relaxed. I had read the boys' books and seen their work before I went in and it felt quite small and communal as I chatted to other parents whilst waiting for my turn.
For secondary school forget everything you knew. You walk into the school hall where there are rows and rows of desks. Each has a teacher sitting with a name plate in front of them. It is noisy and stuffy, and all you want to do is walk straight back out, but as the boys are in year 10 (which is first year of GCSE) this was not an option.
The boys had made appointments to see teachers from all their subjects which I was pleased about, but I could feel the stress levels starting to rise as soon as we got there as some meetings were double booked. It felt like we were running late before we had even started. I spent the whole evening apologising as we missed nearly every time slot. On the plus side though, when a teacher had finished with a student he or she would look at their list and as we were so late we were always the next one to be seen, so we did queue jump a lot. I apologise to any parents who had already been waiting for 15 minutes thinking they were next in line.
Having finally sat down in front of someone you have to wait whilst they consult their sheets of paper. I have spent the last three years totally confused whilst I have been told they are a level 6A or 7B as I never understand what that means. Why should you be at a higher level in maths than geography and why is it harder to get a decent level in history? Anyway this is now behind us as we are talking predicted grades. This I understand, or so I thought. Although the grades are A* to C because there are so many elements it is hard to judge exactly where they are, however I won't talk details now as this is another issue on it's own. Suffice it to say that at every teacher I had my son's name, the subject and written details of what the main points were as I knew that by the end of the evening my brain would not have remembered half of what had been said.
I always find interesting when the teacher asks the boys how they think they are doing or what they think will be said about them. Amazingly they are always far more honest than when they are talking to me! It is also good to see those teachers that they do not regard quite so highly to see if their comments are justified and to be fair they usually are.
We did all manage to see everyone and two hours later we were finished. I cannot lie and say everything was exactly as I had hoped but at least I am aware of how everything stands and what areas need to be worked on. I have now seen everyone and the boys have nothing to hide behind when we discuss work as we both heard what the teacher had to say. They now have to act on it and I can relax a little knowing I have another year before I have to do it all again.
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