An ex-teacher has shared her thoughts on parents' evening 'codewords' and revealed a trick she always used to increase the chances of a positive meeting.
According to the education ace, with over a decade's experience, some teachers will use certain phrases and words to describe your kids behaviour without being too blunt.
However, the expert, named Mehreen Baig, has stated that it's not always worth looking into these codewords too much, writes the Mirror.
Mehreen explained some parents can be defensive, and so some teachers may "use euphemisms or to soften what [they're] saying".
However, that doesn't always mean that a euphemism always signals 'bad' behaviour - the teacher is simply looking for the best way to go about what can be an uncomfortable conversation.
The ex-teacher said: "I've seen lots of these things on social media and articles where it says if we say your child is 'a bit lively', it means your child talks way too much or 'he could do better' probably means 'he couldn't do much worse'.
"But it's not necessarily a code word. It's just a way to not offend parents and open up that conversation."
She adds it's important to frame parent's night as a conversation about how we can help improve a child's behaviour and progress, and not as an attack.
In order to do that, Mehreen - who runs a revision series called Glow Up Your Grades - shed light on the trick she used to prompt open and honest discussion.
Mehreen says: "One thing that we were taught where I used to teach, not as an official thing, but my older, more experienced colleagues told me in my first few years of teaching is that it's really helpful to start off a parents' evening conversation by asking the child 'how do you feel like you're getting on?'
"Sometimes parents don't like that because they're like, 'Well, I'm here for you to tell me what you think' but teachers do that because they hope that 99 percent of the time the child will admit their shortcomings."
They'll say something like 'I feel like I try hard but sometimes I talk too much' and then it's not you saying that, the child has admitted it and you can take it from there. That's a little trick I learned quite early on and I still use it to this day when I'm speaking to parents."
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