This article is the sixth in our series on Setting up Guardian Consultations (Parents' Evenings). This guide covers custom approaches you might take when setting up your consultations, answers frequently asked questions related to such custom setups and recommends further reading to help you get the most out of your consultations.
The guides in this series are:
- Introduction - Setting up Parents Evenings (Guardian Consultations)
- Creating a Consultation - Setting up Parents Evenings (Guardian Consultations)
- Adding Meetings - Setting up Parents Evenings (Guardian Consultations)
- Availability and Breaks - Setting up Parents Evenings (Guardian Consultations)
- Meeting Management - Setting up Parents Evenings (Guardian Consultations)
- Specific Setups and FAQs - Setting up Parents Evenings (Guardian Consultations)
Specific setups
Split families and separated parents
To enable separate parents to book separate meetings with the same teacher(s), decide this during your initial meeting planning (Step 2 of our Guardian Consultations setup). This choice is final once meetings are set up. To change it, you must delete the meetings and recreate them or schedule additional custom meetings to create any missing meetings.
To allow separate meetings when planning, ensure the 'Allow separate meetings' box is checked when planning with Form Tutors, Non-Form Tutors, or Course Leads. For Custom Meetings, use the Independent bookings option to allow separate meetings for each guardian.
Note: The 'Separate student meetings' option when planning custom meetings does not control guardian meeting independence; it manages the creation of student meetings.
- Left unticked, this creates one meeting for all students.
- If ticked, this creates different meetings for each student.
If you would like more details, please refer to our guidance on Creating custom meetings for Guardian Consultations.
From the parents' side, if a guardian is not in a meeting booked by another guardian, they will see a meeting is booked for their child in the Parent Portal or App, including the teachers involved. They will not see which guardian booked the meeting, nor will the time and location be disclosed, which will appear as Undisclosed.
Only meeting participants can view this information, even if guardians reside at the same address.
For a deeper dive into managing guardian consultations for split families, please refer to our dedicated guide: Managing Parents Evenings (Guardian Consultations) for split families or separated parents
Parents' evenings for the next academic year
While it is possible to schedule consultations for future academic years, parents can only book consultations themselves via the Portal or App within the current academic year. Admins are able to book slots for parents, though.
If you set up a consultation for the first week of the academic year and plan meetings, parents will see the meeting in the portal, but they will be informed that the self-scheduling period for the meeting has not started yet, even if you have already opened the self-scheduling. Once the new academic year begins, self-scheduling will open for these parents, and they will be able to make bookings on the portal.
If you need to start booking students for meetings before that time, you will need to manually schedule these meetings.
Applicants and consultations
Students who are applicants but not yet enrolled are not eligible for guardian consultation meetings. However, you can use custom meetings to schedule future consultations for when their enrolment starts.
As with meetings for the next academic year, parents of applicants will not be able to book meetings themselves via the Portal or App until both the academic year in which the meeting is held and their child's enrolment have begun. Therefore, any booking must be added manually by an Administrator.
Furthermore, parents of applicants will not be able to see meeting details in the same way parents of fully enrolled students can, so you would need to confirm bookings by manually contacting the relevant guardians via the consultation (see Sending communications and reminders about guardian consultations).
Shared teaching
If the student groups you plan to meet with have multiple teachers associated with them, you will need to plan accordingly. The main reason is that meetings can only be booked if all attendees are available to attend. So, if you have a shared teaching class with limited time, you may need to split your meetings between teachers to allow for enough bookable meetings. Alternatively, if one teacher is unable to attend, you may wish to remove them from the schedule altogether.
For a full discussion and extensive guidance on managing consultations for shared teaching meetings, please refer to our Remove multiple teachers or staff from Guardian Consultations meetings and troubleshooting missing timeslots guidance.
Share your feedback
Arbor's Guardian Consultation module aims to cater to as many needs as possible; however, that does not mean we would not like to hear from you to see how we can improve!
Do you have any features you would like to see or feedback on how the module currently works? We would love to hear from you! Submit your feedback directly anywhere in Arbor using these steps.
- Click the Help & Learn with Arbor question mark icon on the left-hand side of any page.
- Select Share Product Idea (the lightbulb)
- Select the most suitable option
- Enter your feedback
- Click Submit
Find more on submitting feedback here: Our Product Roadmap and how to submit ideas and improvements
Further reading
In addition to this setup series, you might find these guides helpful when managing your consultations once set up:
- Sharing Parents Evenings with Parents and Guardians
- Do guardians receive confirmation emails for guardian consultation meetings?
- Guardian Consultations on the student profile
Staff attending meetings will find these guides of use:
- How staff members can view their Parents Evenings meetings (Guardian Consultations)
- Add private or shared notes for Guardian Consultations
To troubleshoot booking issues, you might find these guides helpful:
- Guardian Consultations (parents evening) FAQ
- Why can't a slot be booked for a Guardian Consultation?
- Remove multiple teachers or staff from Guardian Consultations meetings and troubleshooting missing timeslots
And, to customise your consultation, please refer to these guides:
- Deleting Guardian consultation meeting
- How to Change Staff for Guardian Consultations
- Change the guardians in a Guardian Consultation meeting
- Creating custom meetings and longer time slots for Guardian Consultations
This concludes our Setting up Parents Evenings (Guardian Consultations) series.
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