Good schools know how important it is for parents and carers to support their child’s education at home and want to involve them in discussions about careers and future plans. However, for parents, especially those with low educational attainment or poor levels of literacy and numeracy, can be reluctant or fearful of getting involved in discussions about higher education.
Tackling this issue is not easy, but universities do have a role to play in helping schools. They could, for example, support families with practical interventions that ensure no family feels university is for ‘other people’s children’.
Anne-Marie Canning MBE shares her own experience of why this type of work is so important in her foreword to a new report by LKMco for King’s College London’s Widening Participation team. She describes it like this: “As a first-generation student I remember vividly the moment someone from the University of York took the time to explain student finance to my own Mum. It was transformative to feel I had an ally on the journey to university and made everything less lonely.”
Given that 50 per cent of undergraduate students are now likely to be the first in their family to go to university, this is a new area of focus that is increasingly important.
A national survey by YouGov commissioned for last week’s report found that parents are most concerned about financial aspects of going to university. Many worry about the ’debt’ that their sons and daughters will leave university with and do not understand that because it is an income-contingent loan, it will not directly affect mortgage applications later in life. Parents also worry about the cost of living while at university and the possibility that their children will need to work while at university.
Universities will welcome schools who want to work with them to help parents understand student finance from an early stage in their children’s education journey. As part of this, they should spell out current student finance arrangements, including the fact that graduates only make payments during any time they are earning over £25,000, that the loan is written off after 30 years, and that there is no finance required up front.
Universities, especially the more selective ones, are under pressure to address the lack of diversity in their intake and schools that signal a readiness to work with them are likely to find willing partners. As LKMco’s report shows, some universities including King’s College London, the University of Nottingham and the University of Bath are already engaging with parents, and their work provides practical pointers for schools about how they can secure support from universities. For example, schools should ask universities to include their parent community in specialist open days and campus visits. They can also invite universities to attend relevant parents’ evenings and events at schools, and work with universities to provide programmes to address knowledge gaps and parents’ specific concerns.
Parental engagement needs to begin early in a child’s education journey. As a science outreach manager at the University of Bath puts it: “Teachers are always acting as the gatekeepers so if parents aren’t engaging with the school, it’s really unlikely that they are going to engage with the university and the ones that aren’t engaged are probably the ones you want to engage the most.”
When schools and universities work in partnership on outreach activities there are clear benefits for everyone. This report should pave the way for parental engagement to become a core feature of universities’ widening participation activities and that it will give schools the confidence to develop programmes with university partners that address this important area.
Mary Curnock-Cook is an independent educationist and former chief executive
