All You Need To Know About School Interviews

School interviews offer a great opportunity for parents and carers to meet their child’s teacher to discuss their progress in the classroom. They are an important event in the school calendar, but can be daunting, time consuming for teachers, or difficult to navigate if you are unprepared. Although the meetings are often short there are ways you can prepare to make sure you have a great rapport with the parents in your school community. The Skool Loop App offers an easy to navigate parent-teacher interview online booking system to ensure school interviews are kept simple, and a great experience for all. 

What is the purpose of a parent-teacher interview?
Parent-teacher interviews help to provide a two-way conversion between individual parents and their child’s teachers. Parents discover how their child is going in the classroom, from their teacher’s perspective. Attending school interviews is one of the most important events that parents attend to help their children through their schooling. Allowing them to also keep updated on their academic, emotional, and social progress. As a teacher, it allows you to discover more about the pupils in your classroom and communicate with parents the milestones students in your classroom have celebrated. As well as expressing concern or recommendations about children’s classroom experience to parents, if needed.   

School interview details
For school interviews, the school or teachers will generally schedule an afternoon/evening where parents can book a time to meet with their child’s teachers. These interviews are short, generally 10 to 15 minutes and parents of high school students may be meeting with multiple teachers.  Every parent is invited to attend at least one interview a year, and quite often (particularly for older year levels) students are welcome to attend the meeting with the child.  

Through your Skool Loop app, you can schedule timeslots to meet with parents, make manual bookings and produce notices regarding upcoming parent teacher meetings. Having an app that allows you to notify the parents, is a great way to ensure parents do attend and facilitate more engagement with each child’s family and school community. 

What are some questions parents can ask the teacher?
Coming prepared to the classroom can help parents to get a better understanding of their child’s development. Educational institutes can also ensure their team is prepared with an understanding of each individual child’s learning and developmental needs in the classroom. So parents can find out more about their individual child’s academic learning and behaviour.  

Here are some great questions to consider for each student:  

• Is this child an active participant in the classroom?  
• What does this student do well at? 
• What do they need more help with?  
• Is this child settled in the classroom?  
• How do they get along with their peers?  
• Are there any areas of concern?  
• What support services are available at the school? 
• Does this student have any interests that the parent should be informed of? Ie. writing, math, sport.  

Can parents and teachers arrange an interview outside of allocated times?
Communication between parents and teachers should be constant and not exclusive to parent-teacher interviews. Skool Loop makes that communication easier through our school communication functions. However, at a school interview, the time slot has been specifically set aside for the purpose of discussing a child’s academic and emotional needs in the classroom. Giving educators a better opportunity to get to know their school community.