When it comes to feeling irrationally furtive, parents’ evening is second only to going through the Nothing to Declare channel at customs. The characteristic school smells of floor polish and PE kits, coupled with the sudden presence of the headteacher in her best suit, can have fully grown adults anxiously searching their consciences within seconds. And that’s before you sit down to discover that your pride and joy has been writing swear words on their neighbour’s worksheets.

Once your children are at secondary, parents’ evening often means a tightly timetabled dash around the hall - a format that can feel unsatisfactory, although few schools seem to have hit on a better alternative. Five minutes isn’t anything like enough to get to the bottom of bad performance or disruptive behaviour. And if you’re lucky enough to have a child who’s doing well, five minutes of forcing the teacher to find different ways to say so may not be a brilliant use of anyone’s time.

Still, the first parents’ evening of the year is at least a chance for all the adults involved to establish the beginnings of a dialogue, which is useful if there are tricky issues in the offing. And there’s no doubt that they can sometimes be revelatory for those whose children seem to turn into entirely different people - for good or ill - when they walk through the school gates.

Fleeting meetings

Many parents on Mumsnet relate astonishment at being told that their shy, retiring child is the class chatterbox, or vice versa. The single biggest frustration for parents is timekeeping; a quick scan of discussions suggests that many would be in favour of forcibly pulling away the chairs of parents who go over their allotted slots. Given that many of these overruns are probably caused by anxious parents wanting to get to the bottom of something, it could be really helpful for teachers to bring diaries or calendars and generally come prepared to set up more in-depth meetings.

The single biggest frustration for parents is timekeeping

Another suggestion is to focus on two or three key bits of information you want to get across to parents: as one Mumsnet user writes, it’s “good to know that you have to remind your kid about neat handwriting for Mrs Scary and to stop being late for Mr Throttle”.

Given the time constraints, the public setting and the fact that, at this point in the year, lots of teachers are still working out which name belongs to which child, aiming to impart this sort of fundamental information is probably the most realistic approach. With a bit of luck and a head wind, it could form the basis for a cooperative and useful relationship between parents and teachers for the rest of the year.

Justine Roberts is the founder and chief executive of Mumsnet. For more information, see mumsnet.com/talk/education