Are the teachers being disruptive in class?

OH JOY, IT'S the annual parent-teacher meeting. Queuing with hundreds of other parents in secondary school halls and outside classroom doors for the opportunity of two or three minutes with each subject teacher has got to be the highlight of the year, writes KATE HOLMQUIST

Teachers too may dread the prospect of giving 60 individual performance reports to concerned parents who are sizing them up without so much as a break for a glass of water.

Joe Lyons, administrative principal of Ballybrown national school in Co Limerick, has 30 years’ teaching experience and is also a parent. “In secondary school there are long queues at every table or outside classroom doors with parents holding lists, ticking the names of teachers off one by one. It can be annoying, with some parents taking 30 minutes per teacher rather than their allocated five minutes.”

The event often feels like an institutional formality, yet most parents dare not miss it. “The parents the teachers want to meet because Mary is having difficulties are the ones who don’t turn up, and the ones the teachers have nothing to say to other than ‘Mary is well above average’ are the ones who do turn up,” says the general secretary of the Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland (ASTI) John White. “We can absolutely exaggerate the importance of parent-teacher meetings.”

This week the ASTI went head to head with the Department of Education and Science when White told his 18,000 members not to participate in parent-teacher meetings held outside school hours. In 2004, under the Sustaining Progress process, the department had negotiated a 14 per cent pay increase and a series of six extra payments for secondary school teachers to facilitate three parent-teacher sessions per year held between 4.15pm and 6.45pm, in addition to three sessions held during school hours.

The National Parents’ Council post primary (NPCpp) stepped in to defend working parents’ rights to attend meetings outside office hours.

Beneath the surface of the ASTI row, however, there are real questions over how productive these formal annual parent-teacher meetings may actually be in their current format.

John Lynn was a secondary school teacher for five years before turning to a career in comedy and writing, and says: "The number of parents in denial was staggering . . . The difference between some lads – I taught primarily in an all-boys secondary school – in front of their folks gave me something of a insight into why. It was like an actor playing a different part, de Niro in Cape Fearand de Niro in Stardust. The most bizarre one I had was the mother giving her kid a bit of a belt after I'd explained, out of his earshot, that the only position of authority I had was to communicate the child's misbehaviour to her, and for her to reprimand or discipline him. When she gave him a bit of a clatter and told him to behave for me, I looked like a stunned pedestrian witnessing a horrific car crash. The boy never trusted me again."

Such incidents are relatively rare, but teachers say even with the most co-operative and willing parents, a brief formal meeting is not enough for a child with serious difficulties. Says White: “We can’t exaggerate the importance of parents’ interest in a child’s education. If parents are concerned, they should come in to meet the principal, deputy principal or year head along with the teacher in whose subject the child is having difficulty. The student may attend as well. It’s far more substantial than two or three minutes at the annual parent-teacher meeting.”

Rose Tully, president of the NPCpp, agrees that the most meaningful parent-teacher meetings are scheduled individually in response to a particular issue, such as worries during Leaving Cert year.

“The door should always be open,” agrees Áine Lynch, CEO of the National Parents Council primary. “The annual parent-teacher meeting is a vital event because it’s a concrete time to discuss how children are doing in school and how things are going at home, but things should not have to wait until that time,” she says.

But for young teachers dealing with parents who are old enough to be their own parents, it can be “intimidating”, says Lyons. “The worst are when the mother and the father might come in, the mother does all the talking and the father sits taking notes.”

For parents, especially in primary school where teachers are now acutely aware of the signs of learning and co-ordination difficulties, parent-teacher meetings can confirm their worst suspicions.

“If you haven’t the best of stories to tell, whether it’s a behaviour problem or a learning difficulty, parents can feel very vulnerable,” says Vincent Duffy, administrative principal at Breaffy national school, Co Mayo.

Yet parents make great sacrifices to support their children and fathers, in particular, are more often seen around the school gates these days because they’ve lost their jobs or are working part-time due to the economic downturn, a trend that Joe Lyons has also spotted.

Primary schools, in general, seem to welcome parents for more than fund-raising. Hugh Cronin, with four years’ teaching experience and a young family, works at Scoil An Chroí Ró Naofa, Co Cork. “We’re an eight-teacher school and at the centre of the community. I run across parents at the school gates and informally all the time out of school hours. The formal meetings are at a particular time in the year and they are not as big a deal as they are made out to be. Parents are always welcome to make an appointment to come into the school.” As a parent, though, he admits that parent-teacher meetings can still be daunting, especially when, like him, you have a child in the school: “I send my wife.”