[1] Parent–teacher conferences supplement the information conveyed by report cards by focusing on students' specific strengths and weaknesses in individual subjects and generalizing the level of inter-curricular skills and competences.
[2] Most conferences take place without the presence of the students whose progress is being discussed,[2] although there is evidence that their inclusion increases the productivity of the meetings.
In case of electronic parent–teacher conferences, neither parents nor teachers need to be at school or other common location and can participate in the meeting from home or while working or traveling.
The school does not need to reserve rooms for the meetings and there is more flexibility in finding suitable time.
The disadvantages of electronic are a lack of face time that many participants are used to and a need for the availability to unfailing technology.
Parent–teacher interviews are a tradition in Western school systems, such as Australia, Canada, the UK and the United States.
The difference between parent–teacher conferences and a PTA meetings is that the former focus on students' academic progress while the latter organize more extra-curricular activities.
Some counties in the US have proposed to consider it a legal violation for parents or guardians who fail to attend at least one parent–teacher conference during the school year.
[4] The event is often held in the school hall and adjacent communal spaces where parents move through a series of eight to nine face-to-face 5 minute consultations with individual teachers.
The advantage of the second is that parents need not be involved in scheduling, the disadvantages are that teachers need to do the scheduling after their classes are over or during break times that they would otherwise need for rest, prepare for classes or advising students, parents do not know which slots the teachers have available and often get times that aren't suitable or optimal (booking schedules are optimized from the point of view of the teacher, not the parent); if a student doesn't want his/her parent to see teachers, all he/she may just not make the bookings, or leave it so late that there are no times available.
In principle, the middlemen could be avoided by automated scheduling by phone but is currently hindered by the lack of sophisticated speech analysis.
Parents sometimes complain that schedules are not running on time, causing them to miss interviews, or be cut short.
This is usually due to either parents or teachers electing to continue talking beyond their booked time slot.
One factor that naturally reduces this effect is the presence of another parent ready to start the next interview and clearly in view of the teacher.
There are several other options that can assist on-time running of events: Parent–teacher conferences have been criticized for their class bias and inefficiency because the meetings are attended mostly by the parents of more privileged children, while the parents of the children who are more likely to need extra assistance do not attend.