Conclusion: Meetings Do Matter

School meetings are an essential component of educating and engaging with students and their families. This guide aimed to review how meeting spaces can be facilitated to bring about real change and create a therapeutic relationship that can impact progress and build relationships between the school and the families they support. This is important because much of the work that happens in meetings involves helping students set and achieve targets. Looking at your own school policies will highlight how important it is to collaborate, consult and create solutions alongside the students and their parents. Many schools also promote the use of the student and parent voices. Centring the needs and wants of the key stakeholders ensures that the work done by school staff has a purpose and is impactful.

When meetings do not work for the student, they can feel inefficient, unproductive, dull, polarising or combative. Meetings of this nature are much like a table: it is laden with food which does not cater for everyone’s dietary requirements, the place settings leave out key stakeholders, and the foundations are wobbly, making the whole thing feel unstable and likely to topple over at any minute. Much like a table that can bring people together to share a meal, meeting spaces can make this experience much more uncomfortable if the table is an unpleasant place to eat or the meal itself is not palatable.

Make your table a pleasant place that people want to come to.