At least once per year, parents are invited to attend a Parents' Evening. A long time tradition in the UK, these important events are designed to ensure that parents are kept up-to-date on their child's progress.
One to one meetings allow teachers and parents to discuss and feedback any successes, concerns or issues, offering a forum where they can work together to help the child reach their full potential.
UK guardians have an important role to play when acting on behalf of overseas parents during these events. Overseas parents are usually unable to make the journey to school to be there themselves, so at Bright World we see attending on their behalf and important part of our role. Schools prefer someone to be there as well to support the student so they are always pleased to see a Bright World Representative in attendance.
As well as hearing about their child's academic progress, parents of our guardianship students are also keen to have an indication of how their child is adapting to their new life overseas. Academic progress can often be heavily influenced by a student's overall wellbeing and Parents' Evenings offer the opportunity for teachers to provide additional detail face to face.
As guardians we must be ready to ask the right questions and report on any discussions in full, whether these be positive or negative. This added insight not only reassures or informs parents but also helps us to fulfil our promise in safeguarding the children under our care.
Since the Covid-19 pandemic began, many schools have started to offer online Parents' Evenings. Bright World Buddies have been able to attend these either on their own, if a parent is unavailable, or with the parent to offer extra support. We think the online Parents' Evenings are quite successful and we think this may be a new development that may stay in place even post-pandemic.
After attending a Parents' Evening, we write a full report detailing each subject discussed. This is uploaded to our parent portal, Blink, for parents to read. The Blink parent portal allows parents to keep up to date with a timeline of all our communications with their child. Reports, phone calls and even text messages are uploaded so parents really don't miss a thing.