Five Minutes at Parents' Evening: The Maths Questions Worth Asking

You have queued for eleven minutes. You sit down. The maths teacher, who has done this fourteen times already this evening and has nine more to go, looks at a spreadsheet and says: “Yeah, she's doing fine. Working hard. No concerns.”

You say thank you. You stand up. In the car park you realise you have learned nothing at all, and you have to wait four months for another go.

“Fine” is not information. It is the default output of a system that gives a teacher five minutes and thirty families. Getting something better out of those five minutes is entirely possible, and it comes down to asking different questions rather than asking more of them.

I'm Jonathan, founder of MathsTutor.me. Here is the version of parents' evening that produces something you can act on.

Why “fine” happens

Not because teachers are unhelpful. Because of the mechanics.

A secondary maths teacher may see 150 to 200 children a week. Five minutes per family, back to back, for two hours. They have a spreadsheet of scores and a general impression, and they have to produce something to say about every child, including the thirty who are unremarkable.

Open questions produce open answers. “How's she getting on?” can only be answered with a summary, and the summary of an unremarkable child is “fine.”

Specific questions produce specific answers. That is the whole trick. Teachers almost always have more detail available than they volunteer, because volunteering it in five minutes for 200 children is impossible. Ask precisely and you unlock it.

Before you go: two minutes of preparation

Decide your one question. You will not get through six. Realistically you will get two or three, and one of them will be derailed. Know which one matters most before you sit down.

Bring one piece of evidence if you have a concern. A specific homework they could not do, a test they were upset about, a topic they mention repeatedly. Specifics get engagement. Vague worry gets reassurance.

Ask your child what they would want you to ask. Genuinely revealing, takes thirty seconds, and children often name the exact thing they are stuck on when asked this way rather than directly.

The seven maths questions worth asking at parents' evening

Pick two or three. Not all seven.

1. “Which topics is she strongest and weakest on right now?”

The single best opening question. It cannot be answered with “fine,” it is easy for a teacher to answer because they have the data in front of them, and it gives you topic names, which is what you need for anything you do at home.

If the answer is genuinely vague, the follow-up is: “If you had to name one topic to work on at home this term, what would it be?” Almost nobody refuses that question.

2. “Is she where you would expect for this stage of the year?”

Different from “is she doing well,” which invites comparison to the class. This asks about trajectory against the curriculum. It is also the question that most reliably surfaces a quiet concern the teacher had not planned to raise.

3. “When she gets something wrong, what kind of wrong is it?”

My favourite, and almost nobody asks it. There are four answers, and each implies a different fix at home:

• Doesn't understand the concept: needs re-teaching, which is the school's job, plus possibly a short burst of tutoring — here's when I'd hire a tutor.
• Understands, but picks the wrong method: needs targeted practice on question types.
• Right method, arithmetic slips: needs fluency work and checking habits.
• Doesn't read the question properly: needs a specific habit, not more maths.

A teacher who has marked their books knows this immediately, and it is the most actionable thing you can leave with.

4. “Does she ask for help when she is stuck?”

The quiet-child question, and the single most useful thing to know about a secondary maths student. Children who sit silently through confusion accumulate gaps invisibly for terms at a time — it is the main mechanism behind the Year 7 maths cliff. If the answer is no, that is a specific, fixable behaviour, and it is worth more than any topic list.

5. “What would you do if she were yours?”

Slightly cheeky and remarkably effective. It gives the teacher permission to step outside the professional script and say what they actually think. Use it once, late in the conversation, and only if you have built a bit of rapport.

6. “Is she in the right set, in your view?”

Only if setting is relevant, and ask it neutrally, as a genuine question rather than a challenge. Teachers will usually give you an honest answer if it does not feel like the opening move in a complaint. Follow up with “what would need to change for that to be reviewed?” if the answer is interesting.

7. “What is coming up next term that she might find hard?”

Forward-looking, and nobody asks it. It lets you prepare rather than react, and it signals that you are a parent who does things at home, which changes how the rest of the conversation goes.

Questions that waste your five minutes

“How is she doing?” Produces “fine.” Every time.

“Is she behaving?” If she were not, you would have heard. It uses up a minute confirming something you already know.

“What can we do at home?” Sounds proactive, and produces a generic answer about practising regularly. Ask question 1 or 3 instead and the answer to this becomes obvious.

“Is she the best in the class?” Teachers will not answer it, and if they did it would not tell you anything useful about your child's mathematics.

Anything you could find in the reports. Do not spend live teacher time reading out data you already have.

If the answer worries you

Two rules.

Do not litigate it in the five minutes. There is a queue behind you and a teacher who cannot give you a proper conversation in this format. If something serious comes up, the correct move is: “That's really useful and I'd like to talk about it properly. Can I email you to arrange a time?” That sentence gets you a real conversation and makes you the reasonable parent rather than the one who overran.

Write it down in the car. Immediately, before it blurs with the other four subjects. Topic names, specific phrases, anything about the kind-of-wrong question. You will not remember it accurately by Saturday, and this is the raw material for whatever you do next.

After: turning five minutes into something useful

You should leave with something like: strongest topic, weakest topic, what kind of wrong, and whether they ask for help. Four facts. Here is what to do with them.

Verify independently. A teacher's view is one data point, formed under load, sometimes from a single test. A fifteen-minute topic-level diagnostic (ours is free) either confirms it or shows you something different, and both outcomes are worth having. If the school says fractions and the diagnostic says fractions, you have high confidence. If they disagree, that is worth a follow-up email.

Do one thing, not five. Pick the weakest named topic and do fifteen minutes a day on it. Not a full revision programme. One topic, small and daily, until the next review point.

Fix the behaviour if it came up. If the answer to question 4 was no, that is your project this term, and it is worth more than any topic work. Practise the specific words with your child: “I don't understand question three, can you show me again?” Rehearse it out loud. It sounds silly. It works, because for many children the barrier is not willingness but not knowing what to say.

Follow up by email once, in a fortnight. Short, specific, appreciative: “You mentioned ratio was the weak spot. We've been doing fifteen minutes a day on it. Has anything changed at your end?” This is a small thing that changes how a teacher sees your child, and it costs you two minutes.

What to do this week

1. Before the evening: ask your child what they would want you to ask. Thirty seconds, and often the most informative part of the whole process.
2. Pick two questions from the list, not seven. Question 1 and question 3 if you cannot decide.
3. Afterwards: verify what you heard. Free fifteen-minute assessment here. Then pick one topic and do fifteen minutes a day on it until the next review point.

The honest version

Parents' evening is a bad format for the thing it is trying to do, and everyone involved knows it. Five minutes, no notice, thirty families, a tired teacher and a corridor full of coats.

But it is one of very few moments in the year when someone who has watched your child do maths three hours a week will answer questions about it, and most parents leave without asking anything that could not have been answered by the report they already had.

Two specific questions. Four facts written down in the car. One topic, fifteen minutes a day. That is a better term than most children get out of parents' evening, and it costs you nothing but a bit of preparation in the queue.

The free assessment will confirm or challenge what you were told, and the free tier gives 6 exercises a day per child, forever, for the fifteen minutes afterwards.

Jonathan Beresford is the founder of MathsTutor.me, a UK curriculum maths app for ages 5–16. He built it over about a year because his own child was falling behind. You can try the free assessment here or explore the free tier.