Dear Parents/Carers,
Year 11 Parents Evening – Thursday 30th September 2021
Thank you for your feedback in my recent Parental Survey regarding your preference of virtual parents’ evenings or face to face. There were 76 respondents for Year 11 and so we have a good idea of your views and for this year group about a third of respondents preferred face to face whilst the rest found that access to the meetings was made easier with virtual meetings for reasons such as not needing to arrange childcare or being able to ‘attend’ from a place of work.
In order to accommodate everyone’s preferences, we are trialing a hybrid approach for this coming parents’ evening, whereby you can make face to face appointments if you prefer or virtual ones. In order for this system to be successful, it will be more important than ever to remain on schedule and not overrun with appointments.
In the survey, a number of parents commented that 5 minutes did not seem long enough with each teacher. Whilst I agree with this in principle, it is very difficult to allocate any longer because of the number of students each teacher teaches. Even if a teacher only has one class in that year group (which is often not the case, and indeed a number of subject teachers such as music have 3 or more in each year group) then that means 30 lots of 5 minutes which is 2 and half hours in itself.
Additionally, a number of parents commented on the quality of the internet connection at our last parents’ evening. Please can I apologise for that, we are not expecting the same IT issues with the next one. However, if we were to have continued issues, we would have to rethink the system.
Finally, I did receive some comments about not being called following not having been able to see a teacher or not having long enough. It should be the case that you receive a timely phone call from a subject teacher if you request one and so please email your Year Team if there are any problems with this and we will ensure it happens.
The details of how to make appointments are as follows:
Appointments will be available between 3.30pm and 6.30pm and can be booked using the Parents Evening System online, via the School website (HDHS website), from Monday 20th
September at 9.00am. The deadline for booking appointments is Thursday 30th
September at 9.00am.
Please use this link to access more information re attending your video appointments
If a face to face appointment is required please book a video call appointment and ensure you leave an ‘appointment message’ at the end of your booking to say you will be attending in person. Parents making face to face appointments should register at reception first and then wait outside of the classroom until they are called in for their appointment.
If you are unable to access the HDHS website to make your appointments please telephone the school reception on the above number and someone will be able to help you.
Thank you for your support.
Yours sincerely
Kate Finch
Head Teacher
