Make sure that both parents attend. Both of you need to know what's going on in the child's school life. Encourage the child to go with you, it reinforces both yours and the teachers' efforts to know that you are both aware of where you are at. Look at their exercise books before you go to get an idea of what they are achieving at the moment and make a list of any concerns you may have. Based on this, make a list of the most important teachers to see and where possible see them in list order.

Ask your child to get involved. What do they think will be said? What do they want to show you? What targets have been set? Do they understand them? What can you do to help them achieve them? When speaking with teacher you will then have the whole picture.

Talk to your child and ask them what their favourite subjects are, what their least favourite subjects are. What subjects they're good at, what they're npt so good at. At the actual parents evening, inform their teacher that you want to know your child's skills. At my parents evening, the my techer lardy-dardied around saying that I'm good at everything. But the thing is, I'm not very good in maths. My parents reaslised that, told the teacher and made sure that she worked on giving me a good education in maths.

Prepare some questions beforehand to ask the teacher :)