Parents are increasingly interacting with schools electronically and parent teacher interview booking has been found to provide a very large degree of goodwill to the school. Parents who use an ‘efficient’ system to book their interviews electronically consider the school in a whole new light. They immediately equate the booking system technology to the ‘type’ of systems the school uses. Wouldn’t you like your child to be taught at a modern school, which uses modern technology? No amount of fancy sales speak in the enrolment brochure can make up for a parent physically interacting with the school’s own technology system, and finding it a positively rewarding experience.

There is much confusion and misunderstanding about many aspects of central scheduling of parent teacher interviews. Schools often assume there is little difference in the concepts of centralised scheduling compared to other methods – either paper based, or online booking to specific times.

What is often misunderstood is that the majority of benefits, of parents interacting on the web to schedule versus on paper forms, are in the most part related to the difference in the TYPE of scheduling, being centrally scheduled (at once by the school), as opposed to managed by end users, or in a sequential, individual and linear manner. Confused? To clarify further – parents get excited not about booking specific times online but about getting a better schedule. Let’s examine different types of scheduling methods.

Student led scheduling (paper forms)
This is by far the most common form of parent teacher scheduling. Both students and teachers have a paper schedule form. Students approach their teachers in turn and negotiate a suitable time. The advantage of this is simplicity: no central administration, students book directly with teachers. But this type of scheduling comes at a big price, which has significant hidden costs:

• Educationally poor. Students are directly involved in the process. Less organised students may not book interviews at all.
• Inefficient for parents. Only ‘early booking’ students get time efficient schedules for their parents, and families with multiple children often end up with poor quality schedules.
• Inefficient for teachers. Teacher schedules are very inefficient unless heavily booked, so some may be waiting for long periods between interviews instead of leaving early after solid bookings.
• Unfair. Favours those who submit early and disadvantages those who submit later. This may encourage students to schedule done early, but interviews are not allocated according to need.
• Poor reporting. Schools have no record of which parents do not attend these evenings.

Online Book-to-Time Systems
Parents can book interviews to specific times on the web. Removal of the students from the process is very beneficial and empowers parents. Schools can analyse data on who came and parents get printed schedules produced very quickly. One disadvantage is to teachers, who lose control of the process with this method, and end up with less ideal schedules, as there is always one parent who decides to book that last slot on a whim! Examples of ‘book-to-time’ systems include: www.ptonline.net.au and http://pt.sobs.com.au.

Centrally Scheduled Events
Central scheduling parents do not ‘book’ interviews, so much as ‘request’ them. This is a subtle, but significant, difference. The school produces a schedule that best suits all participants based on their requests. This is published to parents, who can then modify interview times or add new ones as required. Unusually, central scheduling does not even require the web at all, as parents can send in preferences on paper forms, as there is no negotiation of times required initially – though it is more common that parents enter ‘requests’ online. The benefits of this method are massive. Often more interviews are booked, compared to before, everyone has a far more efficient schedule, parents see more of the teachers they want as requests are equitably allocated according to parent priority for each teacher, time availability, and time preferences.

EdvalPTN is the only Australian system that supports a central scheduling method, as part of an online / off-line system (the bookto- time method is also supported in this system)

www.tinyurl.com/PTNMyths has more, but there are many common areas of misunderstanding:

Web access is the best improvement in PTN scheduling. False!
Central scheduling gives around 80% extra benefit to participants, whereas web access is only 20%. Central scheduling is far better educationally, better equity in access to busy teachers, and with schedule efficiency an order of magnitude better. This misconception is wide-spread for users who are not familiar with central scheduling via algorithms – and see online booking as ‘the system’, instead of online centrally scheduled events as ‘the system’. It is a new approach, but provides so many significant benefits that improved access via the web is a relatively minor benefit in comparison.

PTN events should be run ‘one year group’ per night False!
With central scheduling, schools often find that it is more efficient to group several year levels together or even the whole school. Parents may nominate available dates and times, or preferred dates and times, and then central scheduling can load-balance across dates. There is significant cost and time savings through multi-date events, which also far better cater to teachers who have two core classes in a given year for example, or parents with several children.

The interview slot duration should be five or 10 minutes False!
The slot duration should reflect the educationally ideal duration, not an administratively easy slot duration for manual scheduling. Schools who set five minutes do so to allow more but this is at the expense of interview quality. Research with many schools and parents has shown that the ideal interview duration is generally six-eight minutes. Concern about booked out teachers can be managed in many different ways such as parent priority, multi-date, multi-year, early starts and more.

Ten minute slots to walking time between interviews is also unnecessary if this is considered and managed by algorithms, instead of forcing all parents to have walking time when they often do not need it e.g. three interviews in the same room with no need to move. Ten minute slots or more are appropriate for primary interviews, where there is often only one core teacher, compared to five or six senior subject teachers for a senior student.

Busy core teachers are always a problem as they are booked out False!
The problem of busy core teachers can be addressed using parent priority levels. Complaints of inability to access booked out core teachers under paper / manual booking systems are due to parents missing out on these teachers at a high level of priority. Central scheduling means these teachers may still be booked out, but by parents with high levels of priority. This means parents are far less likely to complain as they are ALL getting to see their ‘high priority teachers’. This is distinctly different from paper or book to time systems where the early submitting parents book out all the good slots of all the core teachers and cause problems for subsequent parents who may have a higher need of these slots.

The entire problem can be mitigated in a number of ways, such as the ability to start earlier for more teachers, the ability to load balance across dates with multiple years per date, and many other technical aspects that reduce the severity of the problem.

Teachers should be grouped ‘in faculty areas’ at the event False!
To reduce parent movement, faculty groups provide the worst possible arrangement, forcing parents to move from group to group for each new interview. Grouping staff to rooms or areas using the EdvalPTN tools is efficient, as it is based upon actual parent requests.

Schools should provide printed schedules to teachers (or parents) False! Printed schedules require cost and effort to distribute, are static copies which do not reflect any late changes, and do not encourage users to access schedules online where there can be other functionality that may benefit them e.g. the ability to change schedules to better suit their needs.

Tea and coffee is required for parents on-site False!
Central scheduling is so efficient many schools find they simply do not need to cater for parents, as there are so few parents idle on site at any one time.

Who is using EdvalPTN for parent teacher nights?
Robert Dowdell, Deputy Principal, Sydney Boys High School

Andrew FitzSimons, Principal, Dapto High School

Warren Reardon, Deputy principal, Ryde Secondary College

Jim Linton, Principal, Rose Bay Secondary College

See many more testimonials at: http://parent-interviews.com/ testimonials.aspx

Contact
For more information on EdvalPTN central scheduling of Interviews, see www.parent-interviews.com or phone 02 8003 4085