Virtual Parents Evenings – A Guide & The Tools To Help You

Confrontational parents, staying in school until late, parent no-shows, overrun appointments, soul destroying queues of impatient parents…

Ahh, who could forget the joys of face-to-face parents evenings.

But with the events of the past 12 months forcing teachers to embrace a brand new world of virtual parents evenings, could these common gripes be a thing of the past?

Well no… 

Sadly, virtual parents evenings aren’t a magic bullet for everything. Those special kinds of parents who firmly believe that their kid is a child prodigy, and destined for the Nobel Prize, will still exist.

However, there are some absolute game-changing advantages to holding parents evenings remotely, and there are also some great EdTech tools to help you along in your quest for a stress-free virtual parents evening.

What Are The Benefits Of Virtual Parents Evenings?

Parents Don’t Need To Arrange Child Care

Attending remotely means parents don’t have to endure the hassle of arranging child care for toddlers since the appointments can be held right there in the comfort of their own home.

Easier Participation

It also means that parents can more easily attend in situations where they’re either separated, living in different locations, working late, or away on business. 

Teachers Can Share Their Screen With Parents

Since the appointment is held digitally, it means that the teacher has immediate access to a wealth of information held online, and can quickly share their screen and show important information related to the child’s progress.

No More Scary Queues Of Parents

Parents evening can be an incredibly stressful experience for teachers, and to see parents queueing up waiting for their precious allocated time slot can make the whole ordeal that much worse. 

Virtual appointments can relieve some of this unpleasant pressure and allow teachers to relax into the meetings without the sight of a long queue of impatient parents in their peripheral vision.

Like everything though, there are some new challenges that must be embraced as we move into a virtual world of parent-teacher communication.

What Are The Challenges Of Virtual Parents Evenings?

Those All-Important Nonverbal Cues

Research has shown that 93% of total communication is non-verbal, which means words account for far less than we might have first thought. Subtle nuances and non-verbal cues of communication are a little more difficult to pick up across technology.

Seeing The Child / Parent Relationship In Person

Seeing how the child engages with their parents in-person can give you some valuable insight into their homelife and the relationship they have with their parents. 

These insights can give you a fresh perspective and help you to understand certain individuals at a deeper level, and may ultimately enable you to improve the learning experience for them.

How To Smash A Virtual Parents Evening

Pick A platform You’re comfortable With

Whatever video conferencing tool you’re most accustomed to using – whether it be Microsoft Teams, Google Meet or Zoom – use the one that you have most experience with to mitigate any potentially embarrassing technical difficulties!

If you’re not yet fully confident with whatever platform you’re using, then take some time out to familiarise yourself with it. It’ll be worth it.

Try setting up some trial runs with colleagues, so that when the time comes to use it with your students’ parents, you’re ready to go!

Parent Prep

Let them know what you’ll cover in the appointment. Send a document in advance to the parents outlining how the appointment will take place, detailing which technology you’ll be using, how to use it, and what you’ll be discussing.

You might want to use one of the tools we’ve outlined below to send them a brief rundown of what you’ve been teaching their child so that the parent is up to speed before their appointment.

Be Strict On Timings

Make the parents aware beforehand – as part of parent prep – that you’ll be holding strict timings to ensure every parent gets a fair allocated time slot. Don’t feel scared to alert the parents when the time comes to wrap up.

Use An Online Booking System, Avoid Paper!

Find a reputable online system to manage your bookings and appointments so that you have everything in one place. Avoid paper. It’s all too easy to mislay and lose, and besides, it’s 2021.

Parent Engagement Tools To Help You

There are some excellent parent engagement tools out there to help you cultivate a strong dialogue of communication throughout the year with your students’ parents, and help you to run a smooth and seamless virtual parents evening.

If you’re looking for a way of notifying parents via SMS / email with a link to their virtual appointment, then check out the highly-rated Parent Hub. 

It’s a fab tool that’s free to sign up to and offers you a silky smooth communication platform to contact parents with the information that matters most to them.

Tools such as MarvelousMe helps parents feel more involved and positive about their child’s progress in school, so that when parents’ evening comes around, they’re on side, in the loop and better prepared for a productive discussion about their child’s progress.

Built by a once dis-engaged Dad, MarvelousMe is a clever platform that you can use to send parents positive learning-led and praise-led news that’s rarely passed on by the child.

Satchel One is another well reviewed EdTech tool which offers parents an online portal to engage with their child’s learning process while giving teachers the ability to monitor homework, create parents’ evening letters and oversee behaviour.

If you’re after a way of organising your parents evening bookings, then check out School Spider, it offers teachers a great way of managing appointments.

This easy-to-use platform integrates with your school’s MIS and gives parents the ability to select a suitable time slot via their app or on the school’s website.

If you fancy taking a plunge and investing in an all-in-one solution that houses the bookings, notifications and video software, then there’s a good chance you may like School Cloud.

Side note: When selecting software, make sure the vendor is compliant with data privacy, go check out our guide on protecting student data if you need some help.

Is There A Future For Virtual Parents Evenings?

Teachers have had to adapt pretty fast to the EdTech revolution and using education technology to facilitate parents evenings has been no different, but how does the future look for virtual parents evenings?

Just 3% of schools said that they would return to solely face-to-face parents evenings post coronavirus.

It certainly seems like teachers have embraced virtual parents evenings. According to research conducted by Education Technology, just 3% of schools said that they would return to solely face-to-face parents evenings post coronavirus.

I think it’s fair to say that they are here to stay due to the immense flexibility they offer both teachers and parents.

It’s likely they’ll never completely replace face-to-face appointments, but instead be part of a new blended approach to teacher-parent communication.

We’re all for it.