ABSTRACT
In an ideal world the role of parents, pupils and the wider school community should be clear to all teachers in all subjects. They would be seen as essential partners in education, in deciding what might be an appropriate curriculum, the optimum methods of teaching and learning, the type of assessment to be used and the way achievement would be reported. We have not got an ideal world and all too often parents can be regarded by schools as necessary, but unwelcome encumbrances to getting on with their job. Alternatively they can be viewed as noticeable by their absence from meetings. How many teachers have commented at parents’ evenings that they only see the parents of ‘good’ children and never those they need to see. This ‘need’ can often boil down to a complaint, or litany of complaints, about their child’s effort, behaviour or organisation. There are many reasons why parents may not attend parents’ evenings, but one of them is certainly the perfectly understandable desire to avoid hearing a depressing catalogue of summative judgements against their children. Parents often feel such criticism very personally. The result of a large part of their life’s work is under examination.
