Parents Evening

Parents evenings in Tawaasal are managed as a special event type that includes appointment scheduling. School administrators create the event and configure the time slots, teachers manage their availability, and guardians book appointments with their children's teachers through an online booking interface.

How Parents Evenings Work

The parents evening workflow involves three roles:

1. School Administrator — Creates the parents evening event, sets the date and time window, and configures the slot duration.
2. Teachers — Mark their available time slots and view their appointment schedule.
3. Guardians — Browse available slots, book appointments with their children's teachers, and manage their bookings.

Creating a Parents Evening Event

1. Navigate to Events from the sidebar.
2. Click Create Event.
3. On Select Event Type, choose Parents Evening.

1. 1Choose Parents Evening to create an appointment-based event.
2. 2School Trip is for field trips with consent tracking.
3. 3General Event covers everything else (assemblies, sports days).

4. Fill in the event details:
   • Title — e.g., "Year 5 Parents Evening — Spring Term".
   • Start Date — The date of the parents evening.
   • Slot Start Time / Slot End Time — The overall time window for appointments.
   • Slot Duration — The length of each appointment (e.g., 10 minutes, 15 minutes).
   • Break Between Slots — Optional gap between appointments (or "No break").
   • Meeting Type — In Person or Video Call; a video call adds a Meeting URL field.
   • Booking Deadline — The date/time after which guardians can no longer book.
   • Meeting Instructions — Optional notes shown to guardians and teachers, sent exactly as written (not translated).
   • Audience Targeting — Parents Evening events must target specific classes; slots are generated for each class teacher in the selected audience.
5. Click Save or Publish.

Slot Duration

Choose a slot duration that gives enough time for a meaningful conversation. 10 minutes is typical but you may want 15 minutes for classes with complex needs. Remember to factor in transition time between appointments.

Teacher Availability

Once the parents evening event is published, teachers can manage their availability:

Setting Up Availability

Teachers open the parents evening event from Events to reach their schedule page:

1. The page shows all time slots within the event time window.
2. Teachers toggle slots between Available and Unavailable.
3. By default, all slots may be set as available. Teachers mark specific slots as unavailable if they have conflicts.

Viewing the Schedule

Teachers can switch between two tabs:

• View Schedule — Shows booked appointments with guardian and student details.
• Manage Availability — Shows all slots with their availability status for easy management.

1. 1View Schedule shows booked appointments with guardian and student details.
2. 2Manage Availability lets the teacher toggle slots on or off.
3. 3Refresh pulls in the latest bookings.

Schedule Statistics

Teachers see a summary of their schedule:

• Total slots
• Available slots
• Booked slots
• Unavailable slots

Guardian Booking

Guardians access the booking interface through the event notification or by navigating to the parents evening event.

Booking an Appointment

1. The guardian selects which child they are booking for (if they have multiple children).
2. Available slots are displayed grouped by teacher.
3. The guardian clicks on an available slot to book it.
4. A confirmation is shown and a notification is sent.

Managing Bookings

Guardians can:

• View their bookings — See all confirmed appointments.
• Cancel a booking — Free up the slot for another guardian.
• Reschedule — Cancel and rebook a different slot.

Consecutive Slot Suggestions

If a guardian has multiple children with the same teacher, the system can suggest consecutive slots to make the evening more efficient.

Overseeing Bookings as an Administrator

As a school administrator, you can open the parents evening event from Events to reach the same schedule page a teacher sees, one teacher at a time:

• View a teacher's bookings — Open their schedule to see appointments, guardians and students.
• Check a teacher's availability — See which of their slots are still open.

There is currently no single screen that aggregates bookings or participation across all teachers at once — each teacher's schedule is checked individually.

Cancelling Appointments

Teachers can cancel individual appointments from their schedule view:

1. Open the parents evening event's schedule page from Events.
2. Find the appointment.
3. Click Cancel.
4. Confirm the cancellation.

The guardian will be notified and the slot becomes available again.

Tips

• Publish early — Give guardians at least one to two weeks to book appointments before the event date.
• Remind guardians — Send a reminder notification a few days before the booking deadline.
• Check teacher availability — Before publishing, ensure all relevant teachers have been notified to set up their availability.
• Plan for transition time — If your slot duration is 10 minutes, consider whether teachers need buffer time between appointments. Some schools use 10-minute slots with 5-minute gaps.
• Follow up on no-shows — After the parents evening, review which guardians did not attend and reach out to them separately.