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Getting parents involved online seminar recording

How do you get parents involved in their children’s education? What are the challenges both for the school and the parents, particularly those hard-to-reach parents? This online seminar, held in June 2011, provided an opportunity to hear from school leaders who are developing innovative approaches to engaging with parents.

Working with parents

Working with parents

Strategic involvement of parents is a vital ingredient in achieving better outcomes for children, young people and families. Parents can play two key roles: getting involved with their children’s learning at home and contributing to the life of the school.

Why is working with parents important?

Parental involvement in children’s education from an early age has a significant effect on educational achievement, and continues to do so into adolescence and adulthood.

Research also shows the benefit of learning across the family. Family learning broadly refers to approaches which engage parents and children jointly in learning. This can include family literacy and numeracy programmes to improve the basic skills of parents. It may also include joint parent and child sessions to support early reading skills.

No school can meet the needs of all its pupils alone. Delivering better outcomes, particularly for disadvantaged children and families will require schools to work in partnership with other schools and with wider children’s services. It will also ensure that, among other things, parents will have access to a range of extended services including information and support on parenting skills and advice on parenting issues.

In addition to this, one of the new features of the revised inspection arrangements which became effective in September 2009, is a parent’s view on the effectiveness of the school’s performance.

For further information see:

What are the challenges of working with parents?

Generally speaking, educators receive little training in working with parents. Your staff might find it hard to recognise the parent’s competence and commitment to their children’s learning. Adding a further challenge, parents who have had bad experiences of schooling may feel daunted by being in school settings. Other challenges include:

  • finding appropriate funding and resources
  • making space and time
  • letting go of traditional power relationships so that parents and educators work together on an equal basis

Research shows that to successfully engage parents, you will have to play a leading role. This includes encouraging staff to work with parents and creating opportunities for staff training. You will also need to be prepared to take key members of staff away from their normal duties in order to make working with parents a priority.

For further information see:

How to form partnerships with parents

Successful partnerships with parents are based on the idea that parents lead the agenda, working with school staff. One approach to this is to create a parent-led ‘action team’ so that parents themselves are in lead positions – not teachers or governors. Evidence shows that when parents are in the lead, more is achieved, because parents are more engaged. However, as a school leader, you must be involved. It is important that the school supports the action team and helps parents on the team to recruit new members. Here are some tips on getting started:

  • form a parent-led team
  • conduct an audit of existing activities
  • consult widely to identify potential projects
  • allocate tasks within the team
  • monitor and evaluate projects
  • celebrate success

Projects might include:

  • health and fitness workshops
  • parenting sessions
  • after-school clubs
  • family learning sessions

For further information see:

Examples of good practice

Some useful discussions in our online network have also taken place:

Related publications and resources