How schools can foster stronger connections with families to enhance outcomes

The Role of Parentkind in Supporting Schools and Parents in Education

As a national charity, Parentkind believes that parents and carers should play an active role in education and school life, decision-making and policy change. This is reflected throughout the work we do – as the membership body for Parent Teacher Associations (PTAs) with over 13,000 in active membership, raising £120 million annually. We poll parents across the UK regularly on a range of issues, conduct one of Britain’s largest annual parent surveys – the National Parent Survey – and represent parent views to governments and agencies. We have created campaigns with a number of organisations including Asda for the Cashpot for Schools initiative, FatFace for the No Cold Child campaign, Decathlon, Regatta and, most recently, Rubies Masquerade to donate 100,000 free costumes to schools for World Book Day.

As Head of Parent Participation at Parentkind, my role oversees our Schools and Parent programme work. My focus, through our suite of training, tools, information and resources, is to support schools to embed effective methods and parents to be engaged in education and school life – we work to harness parent voice, and parent participation and build strong relationships between families and schools. 

The Importance of Parent Engagement

Parent engagement is receiving increased attention across the sector, and rightly so. At the heart of our schools’ work is the ethos that effective parent engagement practice is important and brings benefits to all. When done well, it can influence raised academic achievement, better attendance and behaviour – as well as building connection and trust, collaboration, community, partnership, raised aspiration and increased staff retention. Studies in this area have noted that “the effect of parental engagement over a student’s school career is equivalent to adding two or three years to that student’s education” (John Hattie) and Ofsted and Social Mobility Commission have noted connections between parent engagement and children’s outcomes. 

Schools know and see that parent engagement is of value. Through our polling, 85% of teachers agreed that school life brings benefits and 75% noted that it improved outcomes for young people. 

Parents want to engage, too. Nine in ten parents would like to get more involved in their child’s school, with 85% noting they want to play an active role and 73% wanting a say in their child’s education, at the school level. 

Barriers to Effective Parent Engagement

Parents and schools want the same thing, the difficulties are the barriers that are faced on both sides. Schools lack the confidence to work with parents, most don’t have a written engagement plan or specified lead for this work, and the vast majority have not undertaken any CPD training on parental engagement. Beyond this, many schools have no means to track or measure methods, staff struggle with workload and a lack of time, they have difficulties in involving parents and can experience challenging parent behaviour. 

Parents can feel isolated and unable to connect with schools and they often struggle to have time to give. We know some parents are challenged by work and childcare commitments, costs, language barriers and knowledge of the system. Many parents have told us that they have not been asked to get involved in school opportunities, parents are not always sure what they have to offer and they can feel intimidated by the idea of getting involved. Less than half of parents told us they felt listened to and less than half felt their school acted on feedback. 

The Role of Schools in Leading Engagement

Whilst parents can influence their connection and relationship with the school – the work of effective parental engagement needs to be led by schools. If we want to tackle the many challenges and optimise the opportunities and outcomes for young people, families and communities, then we must have good practice in schools for effective relationship-building and engagement. Leaders should set the tone and do the work to embed good practice, and this will be adopted from the top down so that a whole school approach can be taken.

Schools told us there was a need for a model – a consistent, effective approach on how to overcome barriers and build good relationships. We initially commissioned research with Canterbury Christ Church University – which led to the design of a framework in consultation with many key stakeholders and a pilot project across twenty-one schools in Doncaster.

From here we established the Blueprint for Parent-Friendly Schools, a model to support schools to lead on, plan and embed parental engagement methods, tailored to their needs.

Key Drivers of Effective Parent Engagement

The Blueprint is built on five key Drivers – Leadership, Ethos and Resources, Effective Two-Way Communication, Supporting Learning at Home, Involvement in School Life and Community Engagement. 

Key methods that make up the Drivers include:

• Having a written parental engagement strategy 
• Naming a staff lead for engagement work and a governor lead – some schools now have a Parent Engagement Officer 
• Delivering CPD-accredited training for your staff to be confident working with parents 
• Having a code of conduct that establishes clear boundaries and expectations for parents
• Establishing forums for parents that enable true consultation and give them a voice
• Having a welcoming school and visible SLT
• Using a range of communication methods, which require a response
• Using technology, tools and platforms to streamline communication
• Having accessible information, translating information and hosting this for parents on the school website 
• Consulting with parents on communication preferences
• Making parents aware of the value of their participation 
• Providing a range of resources and advice to encourage parents to support learning at home
• Frequent communication with parents on their child’s progress
• Offering support for parents in their own learning  
• Providing real-world curriculum rationale so parents see the relevance of their participation 
• Offering a number of formal and informal volunteering opportunities to parents
• Tapping into parents’ skills and talents
• Setting up an active PTA to bring parents and teachers together to raise funds for the school
• Engaging and working with local community groups and leaders
• Developing support for the social and physical needs of the children
• Developing the school as a valued community hub 
• Ensuring your parents know where to find information on the available community services

We hear so many fantastic parental engagement ideas from schools and we learn from them continually to build up a picture of what works in practice.

One key consideration is maintaining the momentum of engagement across educational transitions. It is hugely valuable to capture parents’ engagement and involvement from day one, as children start school, but transitions to secondary, further and higher education are imperative too. Building relationships between schools, colleges and universities, and capitalising on existing engagement with incoming cohorts of students and families, is vitally important. 

How Parentkind Can Support Your School

With a wealth of experience and a comprehensive model, Parentkind is leading the charge in helping schools create parent-friendly environments that promote engagement, trust, and collaboration.

Parentkind can support the development of schools’ plans with parental engagement, with our free-to-download Blueprint for Parent-Friendly Schools model, CPD-accredited training for schools and our newly established Parent-Friendly Schools accreditation award.

If you’d like to speak to the team, contact us at schools@parentkind.org and we’d be happy to help.