Parenting: Think about your child's skills and abilities in a holistic way. Get to know the new primary curriculum to get the best from parent-teacher meetings, a new book advises

Now that primary-school teachers have agreed to make parent-teacher meetings more accessible, every parent should be able to get their five minutes of consultation at some stage during the school year. Getting the best from those five minutes is a two-way street - teachers endeavour to cover as much ground as possible, but a lot depends on the questions asked.

Brian Gilsenan, author of The Essential Guide to the Primary School Years, says that many parents focus on the big three - reading, writing and maths - to exclusion of other skills and competencies that may have much to reveal about their child's development.

"While every parent will want to ask about their child's progress in literacy and maths, it's worth putting a couple of minutes aside to ask questions about how the child is responding to the new primary school syllabus," says Gilsenan. "There is much focus on skills such as groupwork, turn-taking, learning how to learn and investigative learning. It's very interesting for parents to get a view of how their child handles these kinds of competencies."

Here are just a few questions that Gilsenan, who collaborated with a panel of teachers in the writing of the book, considers to be worth asking:

How well does my child integrate with the rest of the class?

Does he rush to participate or hang back?

Does he have recurrent needs that the teacher must address?

How does he engage with subjects such as SEHE (Social, Environmental and Scientific Education) and SPHE (Social, Personal and Health Education)?

It may also be useful, Gilsenan notes, to report on your experiences of the child's behaviour and competencies at home. "If a teacher is made aware of the fact that a child displays a keen interest in art or a strong nurturing tendency at home, the teacher may be more inclined to look for that strength in the classroom."

For the first time, the new primary curriculum, which will be fully implemented by 2005, identifies parents as partners in the education of their children. It emphasises the learning value of play, the importance of linking different subjects and giving children the opportunity to learn through investigation and experience. There is far less focus on right and wrong answers - children are encouraged to express themselves.

"Parents who get to know the ethos of the new curriculum are better placed to provide consistency when helping with homework, to develop in the aims of the curriculum in the home, and to ask the right questions when they get some teacher time," says Gilsenan.

"I approached the writing of this book with an open mind about this new curriculum. If I hadn't been impressed I would have said so. As it happens, I found a modern, open, enlightened programme that parents can really play a part in."

Brian Gilsenan in author of the The Essential Parents' Guide to the Primary School Years

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