Perspectives: getting closer to parents

The National College’s online network always proves a fertile ground for discussion, advice and debate. Trista Smith draws some useful advice from recent discussions on engaging parents.

Engaging with parents. It’s crucial to the running of your school, but how do you ensure that it’s a meaningful, two-way relationship?

These key questions stimulated quite a debate when we opened up two discussions, one on communicating with parents generally and one on how ICT could be used to engage parents in their children’s learning.

Engagement was the key issue for many contributors to these discussions – sending out reminders to parents was seen as fairly straightforward, but getting beyond one-way communication to get parents involved in the culture of the school is more complicated, and according to contributors, the more important task. Here are some of the tips they offered for doing both.

Embrace technology…

Using a text message service to send notices and reminders was the practice mentioned most in these discussions. Email, Facebook and Twitter were also frequently mentioned. Twitter was particularly useful when bad weather led to school closures for many contributors. Other benefits of electronic communication include:

• cost savings
• reducing paper usage and waste
• the ability to communicate with non-English speaking parents through translation tools
• the option of more frequent contact for special schools, where the children are bussed in and there are fewer opportunities to talk with parents

But like everything else, electronic communication has its complications. These include:

• mobile phone reception in rural areas
• firewalls in schools blocking Twitter (This can be avoided by using free Tweetdeck software.)
• parents not telling the school they’ve changed their mobile number
• cost, although rising competition among providers means that there are deals to be had

…but let parents choose the medium

Not all parents want to move away from paper, and several people commented in this discussion that many of their parents preferred paper letters over email, or that they didn’t have access to a computer.

Suggestions on this theme included having each parent indicate how they wanted to be contacted. Other people suggested finding a compromise. An example of this might be texting parents to let them know that a letter will be coming home with their child.

One contributor suggested that, if you do use email, creating a separate email address that parents can reply to makes it possible to send things electronically that normally require a paper copy (eg permission slips).

Don’t forget the importance of face-to-face interaction

Being visible at the school gates was a popular suggestion. This was seen as vital no matter which other types of communication are in use at the school. Others took it a step further, inviting parents to attend lessons or playtime with their children, or even to attend evening adult learning sessions. Many contributors suggested having drop-in hours instead of arranging set times for parent meetings to fit around the hectic schedules of many parents.

Just taking small steps to make the staff seem more available and welcoming can make a big difference. One contributor said:

“My school has just recently taken down a glass screen in the reception area and although this might seem like a small change the impact has been tremendous on parent staff relations. The office has been made to feel friendlier and parents have been more polite. This small change has had a big impact on the school image and quality of communication.”

Be consistent

In cases where paper notices are sent home, many recommended sending them home with the students on the same day each week, so parents knew when to look out for them.

Think about the message

The rise of ‘text speak’ and the instant nature of electronic communication can mean that we don’t put as much thought into our words as we might do on paper. A well-received suggestion was to use text services to tell parents when their children shine at school, instead of just using the service for reminders or announcements.

Several contributors suggested taking the time to make sure your tone is friendly, not demanding, and that you resist the urge to slip into ‘education speak’ that might turn parents off. It is also easy to send too many texts, causing parents to start ignoring them.

Get the kids involved

Student engagement can inspire parent involvement. One contributor put it like this:

“One method that we have used to encourage the reluctant parents to come into school (and not just the ones who come to everything) is to set up the workshop/whatever it is before the end of the day, take the children to that space and let them see it and then have the parents collect them from there rather than their usual door. We had 50 per cent more uptake purely because the children were so excited by the resources they'd seen.”

Use the power of social media

Blogs are a way to move beyond passing information on to parents and give parents instant access to their child’s work. The host of our ICT-focused discussion, John Sutton, is a primary teacher and also an independent ICT consultant specialising in the use of blogs in schools. He offers lots of advice on using blogs and Facebook to engage both parents and students.

One contributor – a bursar in a small Surrey infant school, was similarly enthused by these channels.

“Reading the children's blogs has completely enthused me about the ability of technology to help bridge the gap between home and school, and shown me a route to continue to enhance the ICT learning environment in these days of dwindling capital budgets.”

Another contributor added: “We make it very clear that our Facebook and Twitter pages are aimed at parents & carers. However, when you look at the wider picture the engagement we get from parents through this and the positive feedback we have received far outweigh the concerns.”

But there are challenges to this approach, as another member pointed out.

“Personally I would love the school to have a Facebook page, it would be a great way of communicating with parents and promoting all the positive things the school is doing on a daily basis... but I have a feeling some parents would be really opposed to this. I think we try and discourage parents from posting comments about school, children etc on their pages as it has caused issues in the past, so sort of feel we would be being a bit contradictory.”

One contributor commented that “communication is always difficult – but I am sure we are better at it now than ever”.

There are certainly more channels than ever before for schools to reach out. There will always be parents who are difficult to reach, but the wealth of information offered in these discussions gives school leaders a great place to start.