One of the most popular innovations during Covid has been the move to online parents’ evenings, but principal Daniel Locke-Wheaton says they require careful handling if they are to prove an effective and permanent alternative


Physical parents’ evenings are set to become a thing of the past here at Aston University Engineering Academy (AUEA), a 13 to 19 university technical college with 600 students in central Birmingham.

We have undergone a massive shift in the way we engage with our parent body and, given that no-one was an expert in online parental engagement before the pandemic, we have had to build the plane as we flew it.

One key area where we saw immediate change was in parents’ evenings and daily parents’ pastoral or academic meetings.

Our evenings had traditionally always been held face-to-face on the one evening, with parents invited for a five-minute consultation, while daily meetings were always face-to-face at our city centre location.

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