Parent-teacher Interview - On-time Running

On-time Running

Parents sometimes complain schedules are not running on time, causing them to miss interviews, or be cut short. This is usually due to either parents or teachers electing to continue talking beyond their booked time slot. One factor that naturally reduces this effect is the presence of another parent ready to start the next interview and clearly in view of the teacher. There are several other options that can assist on-time running of events:

• Bell, chime or electronic voice-over automatically played over the school PA system, at each change of interview time. (E.g. "Please move to your next interview")
• Large clock display projected on the hall screen, ensuring there is no doubt of the exact time, and encouraging participants to be mindful of the time.
• Strongly reminding, and encouraging teachers to stick to advertised times.
• Steering away from very short interview times which are harder to maintain on-time running (e.g. 5 mins), in favour of slightly longer duration interviews that may better suit the time required to talk about issues. Short durations like five minutes ensure more can fit into the event, yet if on-time running fails, the benefit is lost.
• Provision of spacer interview slots at intervals for all teachers with busy schedules, to act as a time buffer - assisting in bringing events back onto time if they are running over.
• Systems that offer optimised scheduling of interviews can provide significantly more compact parent schedules. Parents then have reason to finish their current conversation on time, namely to get to their own next meeting. The natural tendency is often for parents stay longer at an interview, which may be acceptable if both the parent and the teacher don't have another interview immediately following. Optimised parent schedules are also beneficial to the parents by reducing time on-site, and by significantly reducing numbers of idle parents (event congestion).