Beyond Parents' Evening - What Parents Really Want to Know About Their Child's Learning
By Julian Dance —
Tags: Parent Engagement, Teaching & Learning, Student Progress, Personalised Learning, Education, Supporting Learning at Home
Parents don't really want another grade or school report. They want to understand how their child is learning, where confidence is growing, where misconceptions are developing and what they can do to help. Drawing on twenty years in education, Julian Dance explores why the conversation parents really want has always been much bigger than parents' evening.
One of the privileges of spending twenty years in education is that you eventually stop looking only at results. When you're new to teaching it's easy to focus on marks, assessments and whether pupils are meeting expectations. Experience changes that. You begin to notice the things that never appear on a spreadsheet. You recognise the pupil whose confidence has quietly disappeared despite their grades remaining unchanged. You spot the child who rushes because they're bright enough to get away with it most of the time, and the one who knows the answer but no longer believes they do. You start t