Meet the parents

Parents are still a largely untapped resource that can improve your school and raise attainment. Nick Bannister speaks to a group of heads taking parent power to the next level.

The dad was anxious to get away as quickly as possible after dropping his children off at school. He wouldn’t even stop to talk to new headteacher Steve Davies.

“I really wanted a chat with him and encourage him to come into school and get more involved but he was desperate to get away from me,” recalls Steve, head at Coopers Lane Primary in Lewisham, south London.

“The only way I could stop him driving off was to stand in front of the car.”

It was a small incident but it says a lot about the determination of Steve and his team to improve engagement with parents, in particular fathers.

“When I arrived at the school we were having problems with around 12 to 15 boys,” Steve says. “There were incidents of stealing from teachers’ purses, violence, aggression. Mums were involved but dads generally weren’t – they were just bolting off after the school run. What we wanted was engagement from dads at home and involvement at school because we felt this would be key to improving boys’ behaviour and attainment.”

Soon after the school run incident in 2004 Steve wrote to dads, inviting them to a meeting in a local pub to discuss how they could get more involved in the school.

“When the dads came in it became clear that they really wanted to be involved. They just hadn’t been asked.”

That letter produced a surprising response – 12 dads attended that first meeting. When they met again a few weeks later the numbers had swelled to 30. The Coopers Lane ‘Dad Matters’ scheme was born. The scheme’s successful approach has been captured in a practical toolkit which has attracted national and international attention.

“When the dads came in it became clear that they really wanted to be involved. They just hadn’t been asked,” says Steve.

“It was important that we had a conversation with fathers and asked them how they wanted to be involved in the school. A lot of men, unlike mums, don’t want to come and read in class with their child. But they do have a lot of skills that can make a difference, such as football or cricket coaching, DIY, cleaning and decorating.”

The dads soon became very involved in the school. They made a pledge to work with their children on their homework, and started to offer their services to improve the school.

One Coopers Lane father – a landscape gardener by trade – worked with children to design a school peace garden. The project should have cost £16,000 but with free design and volunteer labour from fathers it cost just £2,500.

As the finishing touches were being put to the garden it seemed apt that Ofsted inspectors described the school as “harmonious” while also noting the impressive strides being made by boys in their reading.

“Getting parents involved can help tackle a range of areas,” says Brian Ball, a West Sussex head who is working with Steve Davies and other leaders around the country on a National College project on parental engagement.

“Homework is one. Another is understanding the different needs of ethnic groups by talking to them and understanding what their needs and expectations are. It can also have a big effect on improving attendance.

“Perhaps the most fundamental is engaging parents who have had a bad experience of school as pupils. It’s about targeting them so that they are much more positive about school. This has a real knock-on effect on their children’s behaviour.”

At Morpeth School in Bethnal Green, east London, Jackie Barnes and colleagues used their work identifying pupils in need of support to forge stronger links with their parents and bring them back into the world of learning.

“If the parent buys into education then they will support their children in their studies as well.”

Jackie, an assistant head at Morpeth, is seconded full time to the independent education charity Globetown Community Learning, which is based in the school grounds.

Globetown identifies 25 Year 9 pupils at Morpeth who are at risk of dropping out of the education system altogether because of a range of destructive factors, including a chaotic family life, low aspirations and poor behaviour.

With the agreement of their parents or carers the pupils are enrolled in the Globetown ‘It’s Your Life’ programme. The programme gives the youngsters the extra mentoring and support they need to stay in the education system and complete their GCSEs.

It’s also a way of encouraging their parents or carers to get involved in an education course as well, says Jackie.

“If the parent buys into education then they will support their children in their studies as well,” she says.

Pupils do their GCSE studies within Globetown’s learning centre while parents and carers also use the centre for their own studies in subjects as wide ranging as English as a second language, ICT, maths and textiles.

Jackie and her team have developed a community learning system – an online programme that allows Globetown to track the progress of parents and carers alongside the academic progress of pupils. It helps the charity to support the family more effectively and also shows the parents that their learning is valued.

The project is paying off. Last year 59 per cent of pupils involved in the programme had gained five good GCSE passes, which compares well with mainstream pupils, while many pupils have seen their parents and carers go on to get jobs as a direct result of the programme.

The challenges facing Parbold Douglas CE Primary in an affluent part of rural Lancashire offer a distinct contrast to those faced by schools like Coopers Lane and Morpeth.

Parents want to be involved in their children’s learning but they find it hard to go into the school because of the pressures of work, says executive head Paul Smith.

There is an appetite for feedback and information on their children’s learning, and an online Virtual Learning Environment (VLE), which gives parents access to information on their child’s attainment, is one way of increasing accountability and helping parents build stronger connections with their children’s learning, says Paul.

Parbold has recently introduced Ipad tablet computers so that staff can get quick instant feedback from time-pressed parents when they visit at parent evenings.

“Technology is definitely the way forward for us – it’s the key way we will make the school more accessible for parents,” he says.

The parental engagement advocates are meeting regularly at the College and online to share and develop their approaches to parental engagement and capture best practice, which can then be shared with other leaders.

“The advocates programme is in its third year,” says Brian Ball. “It’s driven by leaders themselves who pick an area to work together on that is a common issue for most school leaders, and they’ve chosen a different area to focus on for each year.

“There is a lot of research that strongly indicates parental involvement having a real impact upon pupil attitudes to learning, pupil achievement and standards, so it’s a key area in which to share best practice; that is what this project is all about.”

Leaders looking to improve their engagement with parents can get help from a new downloadable online resource produced by the National College.

The resource takes a question-based diagnostic approach that school and children’s centre leaders can use with their leadership teams to work out their own strategies for increasing the involvement of parents.

For leaders like Jackie Barnes, the key starting point in any strategy to reach out to and involve parents is for leaders to acknowledge that children’s attainment isn’t just down to the school – parents are essential partners.

“School and families need to go hand in hand if we are to address some of the entrenched problems we have in our community,” she says.

“Schools can’t do this alone.”

To get a copy of Coopers Lane School’s Dads Matter toolkit, contact headteacher Steve Davies at info@cooperslane.lewisham.sch.uk.