It’s a million-dollar question in these times of Covid: how can teachers and parents best work together most to help children recover from all that they have suffered this year? One suggestion at the start of term was to make time for teachers to meet families one by one, to hear their lockdown stories. Schools needed to see and understand what children had done over such periods, to find out how they were and agree how teachers and parents could work together to support each child.

Given the likelihood of further lockdowns - local or national - it is crucial that schools put maximum effort into establishing how families have fared and what support parents will need from them in the event that further closures take place.

According to Barry Carpenter, professor of mental health in education at Oxford Brookes University, in this pandemic, the “common thread that runs through the current lived experiences of our children is loss”. The academic progress that children made during the lockdown varied hugely, with many having done little schoolwork.

It follows, then, that just going back to lessons as usual is not an option: children need different kinds of support to help them process the exceptional experiences of 2020 - and it is important for parents and teachers to provide this together.

An inspirational project in the Netherlands, Parental Involvement 3.0, helps schools to work individually with each family throughout a child’s education, to agree how they can share responsibility for learning and development. It takes the notion of parent participation way beyond the acts of providing information to parents and responding to their enquiries and questions.

Each school makes time at the beginning of every school year for teachers to meet each student, along with his or her parents or carers. Jointly, they agree what the aspirations and goals are for the child, how they will collaborate to achieve those goals, and how - and how often - they will meet and communicate throughout the school year to make sure that everyone stays on track.

Parents receive bespoke advice and support, relevant to their own family circumstances and their own child’s needs, and where necessary, teachers can help parents to access other services.

Similarly, one reason that Scandinavian schools do so well for their students academically and developmentally is their commitment to collaboration. Working with parents is considered a key part of the teacher’s role, in which they receive training and support. School timetables in Finland, for example, include time set aside for teachers to contact those parents they feel they need to speak to, when they may ask them to come into school if there is some sort of concern. The message is clear: schools cannot educate children on their own - a message that, right around the globe, has only been reinforced by the pandemic.

Parental involvement

Closer to home, the Scottish government is well ahead of England, Wales and Northern Ireland in its commitment to parental involvement. It has invested over a number of years in promoting home-school partnership, following the Scottish Schools (Parental Involvement) Act of 2006, which led to school boards being replaced by parent councils. The thinking behind this radical change back then was to help ensure that school policies - at primary and secondary levels - took account of the views, needs and realities of families’ lives.

Since then, there has been investment in materials to support parents as partners in their children’s learning; in encouraging schools to redefine the parent-school relationship; and in funding local authorities and third-sector organisations to help drive this change. What’s more, the inspection framework for Scottish schools is based on school self-evaluation, of which parents’ views are a contributory factor. And, in its attempts to improve social equity, the Scottish government is clear about the critical role that parents play in their children’s education - as well as the responsibility of schools to promote and support this.

In spite of that, there is still much work to be done. A July 2020 survey from the National Parent Forum of Scotland, on parents’ experiences of learning at home during lockdown, found that more than a quarter were dissatisfied with the communication from their child’s school, while 38 per cent said that their child’s school did not provide information or support about how to use an online platform at a time when it would have been invaluable. Some 65 per cent of parents were happy with the Scottish government’s decision for children to return to school full time in August, but 51 per cent saw a need for more detailed information about how the year would be taught, in case of further disruption.

Schools and local authorities have risen to such challenges in different ways. East Renfrewshire Council, for example, made it a priority to keep parents informed of their response to the pandemic. It has communicated regularly with parent council chairs and with parents directly, using letters, texts and social media. The council website has included helpful content for parents and a video was produced to address the many concerns that parents had articulated.

Regular contact

But providing information, while important, is not enough and some schools have taken this opportunity to review how they work with parents. During the lockdown, teachers at Thorntree Primary School in Glasgow phoned all their families on a regular basis, speaking both to parents and to children to find out how they were getting on and what help they needed. Senior leaders at the school took on responsibility for contacting the more vulnerable families and, where necessary, social workers were involved.

The school made sure that these families could contact organisations such as Barnardo’s or With Kids, which could provide help or practical support, including food vouchers and parcels. Thorntree Primary has always prioritised relationships and headteacher Shona Heggie feels that the level of trust built up before the pandemic was key to ensuring that parents felt able to work with the school to support their children.

In a more rural setting, North Bute Primary School, on the Isle of Bute, realised early on that many parents were struggling in their new role, so it arranged online training on how to use Google Classroom. Yet, some parents did not want to - or were not able to - use this technology and the school accommodated these families by providing offline activities, which teachers delivered. All parents were phoned by the school to find out how they were getting on, so any difficulties were identified and addressed early on. Before lockdown, the school had already instigated a system of holding “learning conversations” with families and so, as with Thorntree Primary, the strong relationships that are a prerequisite for effective home learning were already in place.

Positive work

So, what next? There is an opportunity to capitalise on the positive work that has gone on between homes and schools to “build back better”. The critical role that parents play in their children’s education is clear, but greater attention needs to be paid to partnerships with families - and there is no better time for that than now, when there is still so much uncertainty about how Covid-19 will disrupt this school year.

The focus should be first of all on those parents who struggle to support their children’s learning, but there must also be recognition that change will not happen overnight. First and foremost, it’s about creating a sense of real belonging for all - and that takes time. Starting now by meeting each family, one by one - online if need be - schools can reset this key relationship.

But it is not easy: parents have, since the return of schools in August, been trying to return to some kind of normality, and many went back to their workplace for the first time in months. How will this play with future possible lockdowns? Perhaps the government will need to consider supporting parents financially to work part time or to stay at home temporarily so that they can facilitate their children’s home learning if they are unable to attend school.

In the longer term, the need for family-friendly employment practices that recognise the greater role of parents in school life is clear. Parents should not fear being penalised by employers - or ostracised by colleagues - if they are called into school to attend to the educational needs of their children.

There is a mountain to climb in addressing the damage to so many children caused by the pandemic. Yet, by genuinely working with parents, one family at a time, schools can help to level the playing field for pupils because they will be building schools that genuinely meet the needs of the children and the communities they exist to serve. At this precarious juncture in our children’s lives, can we afford not to do that?

Fiona Carnie is an educationalist and author of Rebuilding Our Schools from the Bottom Up. She tweets @fionacarnie

This article originally appeared in the 20 November 2020 issue under the headline “Repairing the damage, one family at a time”