“Parent involvement in a child’s education is consistently found to be positively associated with a child’s academic performance.” (Toper et al, 2010)

Whether a highly experienced teacher/leader, or a practitioner at the beginnings of a career, most would agree with the above. Parental engagement, encouragement and support are vital in helping our students to achieve. Without this support, building relationships with students, and even (at times) identifying their needs, can be enormously challenging.

With the Department for Education publishing guidance in January outlining remote learning expectations, parental engagement is again in the spotlight. With the expectation that schools and colleges will check, at least weekly, whether students are engaging, there is also the requirement that settings will inform parents immediately where there are concerns. This brings the wider point: what have schools and colleges done to engage parents? 

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During the centre-assessed grades process, and throughout lockdown, parental engagement was at an all-time high in most settings, with parents and carers eager for updates on how grades would be awarded and what they could do to support students. This engagement intensified as we discovered how grades were to be predicted and awarded, and peaked during August and September, with many parents and carers querying if grades could be appealed, questioning November resit arrangements (can there be resits without an initial exam?) and querying next steps.

Throughout the pandemic, schools and colleges have acted exceptionally to make sure that parents and carers are aware of all steps in any new processes. However, due to constant changes and U-turns, this hasn’t always been easy and (as a result) many schools and colleges have often found they have had to mirror the manner in which they receive information due to time and workload constraints. In other words, with leaders receiving updates at 8pm on a Friday, they have been forced to broadcast where normally they would communicate. 

As integral cogs in communities, schools and (particularly) colleges thrive in involving students, practitioners, community leaders, the general public, parents, carers, local government and other agencies in decision-making processes. With evidence that not being able to communicate as normal has impacted parent and carer engagement, a silver lining in the cloud that is this newest lockdown could be the potential to reconnect.

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So, how do we start this process?

Well, as has been done with attempting to further engage students, we must facilitate a mixture of traditional and more modern methods of communication. There is still a place for letters, texts and phone calls, but there are obvious limitations: letters can take too long; texts are limited by the number of characters; and phone calls demand essential resources that we are all short of - staff. With information (and the virus) changing so rapidly, we must more fully engage social media and continue to innovate.

Is there now a place for weekly school/college updates on YouTube and other media services (with some colleges already embracing this approach to communicate with staff)? As we have done with students, can we complete informal resource audits with parents (ie, do they have high-speed internet, smartphones, tablets, laptops, etc)? Creating parental Teams groups/ Google classrooms, where documents and essential information can be stored and made easily available, could change the way we communicate with parents and carers forever.

With virtual parents’ evenings taking place across the country, it is clear there is a desire to change traditional means of communication. The new efficiency and structure in parents’ evenings (with Teams meetings giving a reminder when there are only five minutes remaining) has been welcomed by many and should be seen as the start and not the end of innovation in communicating with parents. 

In best cases, this innovation has already started and is gathering pace. Colleges are beginning to produce training guides, videos and materials for parents and carers so they can better support students. Not used Teams before? No problem - there is a step-by-step guide on the college website. Never uploaded an assignment before? Don’t worry - there is a frequently asked questions document in the parent portal of the college intranet or an audio file in the Teams group.

With potential changes to adult education after the recent release of the FE White Paper, this could also be the first step in supporting parents and carers to enrol on to courses (whether to support their needs, develop existing skills or plot a new career path). Regardless, with so much work already done by schools and colleges to support students during the pandemic, we can give more focus to supporting parents.

Jonny Kay is the head of teaching and learning at a college in the North East. He tweets at @jonnykayteacher