It’s a scene played out in thousands of households across the land at this time of year: Mum or Dad bellows up the stairs, “Have you started your revision yet?”

In a handful of homes in the heart of Scotland, however, an unusual reply may echo back down: “Have you started yours?”

Larbert High School in Falkirk has won plaudits for its work in “parental engagement” - a term becoming ubiquitous in Scottish education - and its most eye-catching idea is to have some parents sitting the same courses, and even exams, as their children.

It’s a long way from traditional notions of how to get parents more connected to school life: parents’ evenings where families traipse from one desultory five-minute meeting with a teacher to another; showcases of children’s work where parents gaze blankly at the displays on the wall, as if filing through a hushed art gallery; coffee mornings hawking home-bakes towards the price of a new Astroturf pitch.

In other words, parents may have been invited into school but they were usually on the periphery of the main business of a school: learning.

In Scotland in 2019, however, parental engagement is seemingly being taken more seriously than ever. Parents are regularly being highlighted at education conferences as the most important factor in a child’s education, while new draft guidance on the Parental Involvement Act, expected after the summer, will “raise the bar higher”, according to parents’ organisation Connect.

Back to school

Last August, the Scottish government published details of a new drive - including 50 recommendations - to get parents more engaged in their children’s learning (see bit.ly/ParentsSG). And in April this year, Connect published the latest report into its ambitious five-year programme to build stronger bonds between schools and parents (see box, opposite); the same day, the Scottish government released details of an upcoming census for parents and carers on their engagement with school.

The problem is that, for all the growing enthusiasm about parental engagement, it remains hard to do something meaningful in practice - particularly in secondary schools.

Parental engagement expert Dr Janet Goodall, of the University of Bath, says research gives numerous possible reasons, including: size (primaries are smaller and less daunting than secondaries); relationships (easier to develop with one teacher in primary than with several in secondary); and parents with bad memories of secondary school.

Goodall is a consultant with Connect, which insists that ways must be found around these barriers, as pupils “continue to need parental support and interest to varying degrees throughout their school lives”.

At Larbert High, which has been shortlisted in the “parents as partners in learning” category for this year’s Scottish Education Awards, the boldest scheme involving parents started as a trial this school year. Some 23 parents of S4 pupils have been taking part in weekly two-hour evening classes with their child, working on National 5 maths (three families since the course started) and N5 English (six families from the start, whose studies include poems by Jackie Kay and A Doll’s House, the Henrik Ibsen play).

Some parents will do course units - and three will do a full National 5 course, including the end-of-year exam. It’s an unusual idea that presents some logistical difficulties. A few months ago, a cleaner was taken aback to open a cupboard and discover a mum feverishly working away on a preliminary exam - and it has had an unexpectedly profound impact on some families.

“I have had parents in saying what it’s done for their relationship [with their child],” says depute headteacher Jo Wilson. Parents were used to “a teenager that really doesn’t speak much about school and what’s going on [but] now they’re throwing quotes at each other in the kitchen”.

The project has been funded by money from the national Pupil Equity Fund (PEF), and Emma McMinn - the school principal PEF teacher - says there have been some “phenomenal” comments from parents, along the lines of: “It’s so nice to have a conversation other than, ‘How was school?’ ‘Fine.’”

English teacher Fhionnagh Waterfall, who leads the National 5 English sessions on Monday nights, says they are “very different to traditional classroom teaching, quite often with pupils (who have already covered the content of the evening sessions) teaching their parents different aspects of the course”. She adds: “This has helped reinforce the learning of pupils, while allowing their parents to learn in a way…that is familiar to and comfortable for them.”

In one thank-you note Waterfall received, a parent said her child “isn’t a natural at English and I’m sure you have witnessed I am even worse!”

“I didn’t think there would be any way I could help him revise - I had just planned to cross my fingers,” the parent went on. “However, after attending your classes I feel we have a better idea of the rules and guidelines for answering the questions, how to spot each type of question and what the marker will be looking for.”

Another parent wrote: “Regardless of my ability to pass (or not), I now understand the process, and if I had that when [my son] was at school I could have taken however many hours was needed to find the best way to explain this to him.

“That might have been enough to keep him in school, and that is the potential for the difference family learning could make on their future.”

On the pupils’ side, McMinn recalls one who said: “My mum, she knows [now] how hard it is now to write an essay…it doesn’t just take the two hours she thinks it’ll take.”

Larbert High’s approach had a big impact on one family: a girl who staff say “hated” school and whose mother despaired over how to get her there in the first place. Now, they are studying National 5 English together - and both were due to sit the exam yesterday (May 9).

“Honestly, she’s like a different person…It’s like all the doors have opened,” says Wilson. “She wants to study law now, she’s attending school…This is a girl who really wasn’t interested in school.”

She adds: “Being in a classroom as a 15-year-old, you can be self-conscious, you don’t always want to speak out with the answer if you’re maybe not a high-flier in that class, but being in this environment, where even their parent doesn’t really know what’s going on - I think it’s boosting [pupils].

“I just think it’s the comfort blanket for some pupils of having your mum there in the evening, but getting those extra two hours to really get more confident in an environment that feels safe to pupils, that feels nurturing.”

The nine pupils involved in the evening classes from the start - 14 more have done parts of the English course - come from a range of backgrounds, but were united in not being on course to do well at N5; in prelims for the subjects they are studying with their parents, all got As and Bs.

Wilson admits that “it is quite a commitment” for the teachers involved, who are still at school at 8pm, but says that no one will be coerced into doing such courses - it will only work with “really, really enthusiastic teachers”.

Cracking the conundrum

The plan is to expand into other subjects next year - music has shown a strong interest - and involve more families. And these courses could also be open to others: support staff have been popping into the maths classes, in the hope of gaining a qualification they missed out on when younger.

The maths and English night classes are just one of Larbert High’s various parental- engagement schemes: others include a “work-ready board”, in which parents form an interview panel and use their professional expertise to interview S5 pupils about their aspirations and give them feedback; and a “Stem academy” - Larbert High won the Stem award at the Tes Schools Awards in 2017 - which, over eight weeks, sees pupils work with family members on a practical project, perhaps designing a “pyramid of the future” or a handwashing facility for the developing world.

Staff have been surprised by the large number of parents asking to take part in the Stem academy, which they find unusual for a secondary school project.

Wilson says: “There’s so much in primary school you can do [with parents], then they come to high school and…the young people almost push parents away, they’re almost like, ‘No, no this is my space,’ whereas I think [parents] do want to come in, to see, to be involved in the learning, to do something together.”

Connect executive director Eileen Prior says that many families find that “the prospect of crossing the school threshold is a terrifying one” and that “no good can come of any interaction with the school”.

The parental-engagement conundrum has not been entirely cracked in primary schools either, and the families most in need of better contact with school are often those who remain invisible.

“In the worst cases, these parents are perceived as ‘not being interested in their children’. Research by Dr Morag Treanor, of the University of Stirling, has demonstrated that this is very far from the truth,” says Prior, who warns that “many schools keep talking to the same group of parents and are caught in a loop of repeating the same activities”.

Flexibility is key

Susan Ward, a primary depute head in the Scottish Borders writing for Tes Scotland in March, acknowledged such problems, saying: “Insisting parents miss dinner with the kids to sit through another curriculum evening where the leadership team espouse the virtues of the latest whole-school initiative is not what engaging parents is about.”

She bemoans the practice of “monitoring attendance at ‘open door’ afternoons or fundraising events and assuming that parents who don’t attend are not engaged in their child’s learning”, adding: “It is not reasonable to make judgements about families based on how many cookies they manage to bake for the school fair.”

Yet this, said Ward, “is the model for parental engagement seen most often in schools”.

The Education Endowment Foundation’s analysis of international research on parental engagement leads to a series of recommendations, including that schools adopt “a flexible approach…to fit around parents’ schedules” and short sessions for parents of older pupils. Staff are also advised to concentrate on making school more welcoming for parents who may have bad memories of their own time as a pupil.

Moray Primary School in Grangemouth, also in the Falkirk Council area, has used PEF money to employ a member of support staff as a point of contact for families, building up informal relationships that make it easier to establish a line of communication with parents who may harbour deep suspicion of school bureaucracy. Headteacher Ghislaine Tait says that parents must see “someone they feel comfortable with” in school.

In 2018, for the first time, Moray Primary involved a group of parents in its annual planning of the year ahead, which Tait says “makes them feel like they are valued members of the school community”, although she admits that a lot of parents remain out of reach.

The school, which is part of Connect’s Partnership Schools Programme, has been working on a “life skills room”, which should be ready by the summer holidays. Parents have helped decorate the room and create kitchen, dining and bedroom areas, where parents and members of the community help will help children learn skills such as baking, sewing, cooking, personal organisation, first aid and simple household tasks such as making the bed.

It is a conscious effort to kick that habit in schools of inviting in parents with impressive-sounding jobs to talk about what they do, with the implicit messages that this sends out to parents - and their children - who are not invited to take part.

“Everybody’s got skills - not just doctors and lawyers - that they can share and that are equally important,” says Tait.

Prior, meanwhile, says that two essential features of effective parental engagement are, firstly, that families must be involved in deciding what it will entail; and secondly, that parental engagement “should be integral to school improvement”.

It boils down to this: “If the work is not improving outcomes for children, and school communities are unable to demonstrate its impact, then what is the point?”

Henry Hepburn is news editor for Tes Scotland. He tweets @Henry_Hepburn

This article originally appeared in the 10 May 2019 issue under the headline “The mother (and father) of all problems”