Go beyond marks at PTMs

IN most Indian schools, the parent-teacher meeting unfolds with ritualistic predictability — teachers sit across parents, armed with marksheets, notebooks, and brief comments about their child's academic performance and the phrases we hear more often are - "She's scoring well, but needs to improve in math." "He's talkative in class." "We expect better next time." Parents nod, ask a few questions, sometimes push for grades, and then move on.

So the conversation majorly is around academics and specifically around individual scores. What is almost never asked in these meetings, and almost never answered, is how the child is feeling: not just in terms of stress or attention span, but as a growing, thinking, emotionally complex human being.

This silence around the emotional lives of students is not only a cultural oversight, it reflects a deeper structural divide between what we define as education and what we believe isn't a part of it. Academic outcomes are treated as the ultimate goal of schooling, and everything else - friendships, mood swings, anxiety, social withdrawal, emotional outbursts, is treated as either irrelevant or inconvenient. This results in narrowing of the child's identity to a report card.

According to the World Health Organization, nearly 14 per cent of children and adolescents globally experience a mental health disorder, and most cases go undiagnosed or untreated. In India, government data shared in the Lok Sabha in March 2026 showed that the Education Ministry's student helpline Manodarpan, set up during the pandemic in 2020, received over 3.3 lakh calls in six years.

Nearly 70 per cent of those calls came from children in Classes VI to VIII, and the government noted that some calls involved suicidal ideation, which were referred for crisis intervention. The data makes one thing clear: emotional distress in children is real and something that needs immediate attention. These challenges typically emerge well before they're addressed in most parent-teacher conversations. The parent-teacher meeting (PTM), despite its brevity and limitations, is one of the few spaces where educators and caregivers come together and, therefore, it holds real potential, and should not be reduced to a forum for discussing academic progress, but as an opportunity to understand and discuss the child's learning, well-being and development. But to be able to do that, we need to expand our vocabulary, our language, our expectations, and our purpose for these conversations.

There is a deeply ingrained belief, that emotional well-being is the family's domain and academic achievement is what should concern a school. Unfortunately, the truth is heartbreaking. A child struggling with undiagnosed anxiety may avoid participation, underperform in exams, or withdraw in class, a student facing bullying or low self-esteem may show signs of defiance or distraction - which are often seen as non-negotiables in a school setup.

Any attempt to understand such behaviour requires understanding the emotional context failing which the teachers are left to interpret behaviour through the lens of discipline or diligence alone. Many parents, too, are unaware of how their child presents socially or emotionally in school: whether the child works well in groups, shows fear around authority, or isolates during lunch.

These are questions that never enter the PTM discussion, yet they are essential to understand a child's overall well-being. While we acknowledge that teachers are not therapists, and PTMs are not counselling sessions, the idea is that what is needed is not diagnosis of any issue but emotional presence. A few minutes spent discussing a child's temperament, recent mood changes, or social interactions can open the door to early intervention and support.

Some schools have begun in the right earnest. In pilot programmes across parts of Tamil Nadu and Odisha, schools have introduced a simple well-being form that teachers fill before each PTM, noting observed emotional changes, social behaviour or red flags. Parents are encouraged to reflect not just on homework routines but on sleep, irritability and emotional responses at home. This shift might seem subtle but an important one: from evaluation to conversation.

The mental health of children is not a matter of isolated crises and it should never be. It is a matter of everyday attention, and PTMs offer one of the few institutional opportunities to make that attention visible, consistent and shared. It is extremely important to normalise mental health in parent-teacher conversations because it helps us to recognise that children are not simply vessels to be filled with grades, but individuals who are undergoing emotional growth, often turbulent, often confusing, and shaped by both school and home.

PTMs are also a means to model emotional literacy for parents, many of whom never had the vocabulary or permission to speak about such matters during their own upbringing. This approach is not meant only for children who are "underperforming." A high-achieving student may also be struggling with perfectionism without anyone ever noticing. A child who appears quiet in the classroom, may be coping with family stress. A student who seems like socially confident may still feel emotionally unsupported. Thus, emotional inquiry should not be triggered only by academic concern; it should be part of the educational fabric.

This does not call for a radical overhaul. All it requires is a reframing. What if, alongside math scores, teachers shared a few sentences about a child's peer relationships or emotional growth? At the PTM, what if parents, instead of asking "What's the rank?" asked "How is my child relating to others?" or "Does she seem happy in school?"

When we ask about a child's mood, we do not abandon academic seriousness; we deepen it. Research supports that children who feel safe, supported and understood are more likely to learn, explore and take intellectual risks, and children whose distress is noticed early are more likely to recover, adapt and grow.

We do not need to wait for mental health awareness weeks or policy mandates to begin. We can begin at the next PTM, with one question, one shared observation, one shift in attention. Children are more than their marks, and the adults who shape their worlds, both teachers and parents, must be willing to talk not just about performance but about presence, resilience, connection and care.