The headteacher glances down at the guestlist for the reception the school is hosting to welcome families and celebrate a new building opening: they check to see who’s attending:

Ah, a member of the royal family will be attending, suspect that means several “minders”, too. Oh, and the ambassador and his wife can make it now, that’s good to see. That billionaire business tycoon is coming, too - wasn’t he in the papers the other day for some latest Twitter storm? - and of course, local lawyers, doctors, middle-level executives…I’m sure that section gets longer every time we do one of these. Wonder if they’ll ask about the new homework policy? Should be a busy evening...

For international schools, this potent mix of powerful, high-achieving, not-used-to-being-told-no individuals and the rising number of middle-class parents determined to see their children do well are part and parcel of the parent community, which can make for some interesting moments.

“A very wealthy local businessman sent his son to our school and on the first day the pupil arrived accompanied by a bodyguard…who was carrying a gun,” one school leader tells Tes.

In this instance, the head had to explain to the child’s father that while on school grounds the child would be looked after in the more “traditional” way - which he admits was not an easy conversation to broach at first, although, once explained, the bodyguard did leave the campus.

Another leader recalls a time when they had to delicately explain to a very influential music-mogul parent why their daughter would not necessarily win the school’s singing competition.

Given these sorts of events, Nicholas Hammond, headmaster of The British School of Paris, says managing the parent community in an international school is “possibly the hardest thing to deal with as a head” and an area of leadership that never allows you to get too comfortable.

“You have to follow the Scout motto and ‘be prepared’.”

That’s easier said than done of course, not least because parent communities are not static entities. 

For example, whereas historically international schools were populated mostly by the children of ex-pat parents, it is now increasingly the case that pupils are from local families in the emerging middle-classes who see international education as a way for their children to succeed in life. 

Indeed, ISC Research estimates that since 2000, the proportion of local students in international schools has risen from just 20 per cent to 80 per cent by 2021.

This is a shift that Sonya Papps, head of the British Secondary and High School Section at the Taipei European School in Taiwan, has seen first-hand.

“International schools are interesting in that there tends to be a local parent body who send their child to a school and it’s not unusual for their children to complete their entire education in the school,” she says.

“Then the other parents that come through are the more classic ex-pat parents who are in the community for three to five years, then their contract changes and they move on.”

‘A very wealthy local businessman sent his son to our school and on the first day the pupil arrived accompanied by a bodyguard…who was carrying a gun’

Sonya says this can mean that, for example, there “isn’t one clear shared understanding of parent-school relationships within the parent body” and that the diversity of the parent community means there are different expectations of how a school operates “based on their own traditions”. 

She cites an example of how different parents prefer different communication styles from the school, with European and American parents preferring direct, to-the-point engagement, whereas local Asian families prefer a more delicate approach - which makes it a challenging issue.

“The number one issue we have from our parent community is around communication - it’s either too much or too little, not clear enough or too direct. It’s difficult to please everybody, so it’s an ongoing area of focus for the leadership team to try to get this right.”

Mark Steed, principal and CEO of Kellett School, the British School in Hong Kong, has also seen this shift in how different parent communities engage with a school - and what they expect from their child’s education. “Culturally, these constituencies can be miles apart,” he says.

He gives an example whereby the ex-pat parents expect a fairly active and sporty time in school for their children, but local parents can be more surprised by these activities.

“The idea of camping in the wild can be quite alien to those growing up in a high-rise apartment [and] the very British idea of compulsory rugby can be a difficult sell in this context,” he notes.

Meanwhile, Julia Knight, principal of EtonHouse International School, a small but growing school in Bahrain, says this change in community dynamics means there are different focus points for how she engages with the community.

“We don’t treat people differently but we do cultivate relationships differently,” she says.

“For example, we are looking for longevity that local families bring and so when I’m talking to my local families, those conversations are about how we can grow the school, and what they can do to support us and help us. But with the ex-pat families, we don’t have those kinds of conversations.”

The art of translation 

There are lots of ways this shift in parent communities is playing out and one of the biggest is around language, specifically the increasing requirement to have communications translated, as Colin Bell, CEO of the Council of British International Schools (COBIS), explains.

“A lot of students now are children of parents whose language is not English, and it means that schools are facing the need to ensure messages are clear and any translations are accurate and not ambiguous.”

This need to avoid ambiguity was at the heart of a recent decision by Rob Ford, the director of Heritage International School in Moldova, to have key policy documents translated into Russian and Romanian for those members of the school community.

“We usually communicate in English but we had a discussion recently where we decided we would spend a lot of money on having some 20-odd policies - such as our visits policy, our child protection policy and our online safety policy - translated,” he explains.

“We felt it was better from a legal point of view, to have them translated by the school and made available this way to avoid any ambiguity in the future.”

However, this decision was very much the exception to the rule, as Ford says the majority of communications remain in English and that is something that is seen as part of the international school experience by parents.

“Because we are an English-medium international school, the decision has always been to have all general communication, such as the website and the weekly newsletter, in English,” he says.

“It also stops a slip back from what parents see as a ‘local private school’ and the USP is definitely about being an international English-medium school.”

As a result, he says, although the school always offers a translation of other documents into Russian and Romanian, “very few ever take this up” and instead rely on a mix of their children’s fluency in English - and Google Translate when required - to keep abreast of most school communications.

This approach is one that Papps in Taiwan recognises, too - explaining that translations are rarely used for written communications.

“The view of the school is that whatever family we’re allowing into the school needs to be able to communicate in one of our working languages, which is either English, French or German - and English is the common language of operations across the school,” she explains.

She says this is not so high a barrier as to stop most parents from being able to send their child to the school but admits it does mean that not all parents can fully digest and understand all communications.

“It can present problems but I can also understand the school’s tradition of being a British school or a European school, and being clear about the community the school is intended to serve,” she says.

Steed, in Hong Kong, says that his school has a similar approach and although it does not cause issues, he is aware that this way of operating can sometimes cause problems as parent communities become increasingly localised.

“At Kellett, we require that at least one parent can communicate effectively - written and spoken - in English,” he explains.

“The language barrier can also have an impact on the ability for local parents to integrate. Many Hong Kong residents have excellent English from being educated in the UK, US, Canada or Australia, so this is rarely a problem, but there are problems in other Asian cities.”

‘A lot of students now are children of parents whose language is not English, and schools need to ensure messages are clear and translations are accurate’

Given this shift, David Mansfield, a former headmaster of two major international schools in China, thinks that schools soon won’t have the option not to translate documents.

“I think the days of mostly communicating with parents just in English are long gone,” he says.

He explains that, in China at least, the new shift in the make-up of the parent community to more local parents means that the idea of using the international badge to expect parents to read English communications is rapidly losing weight.

“I think probably the early days of international education in China and maybe other places as well there was this rather sort of neo-imperialist view that said, ‘If you want a British education you need to speak in English,’” he suggests.

“But in China now, the majority of international schools are bilingual schools and it’s Chinese citizens who are attending. The majority of their parents speak very limited English so it’s bad communication and insensitive almost to the cultural background of the parents to not translate.”

As such, he says everything has to be offered in both languages and that the quality of the translation must be up to a suitable standard to avoid any confusion over English phrases or subtle meanings.

“Everything needs to be [in both languages] and that means websites can be toggled [between Chinese and English], newsletters are always translated and any communications from the head are translated and translated well, as the head of a school is often talking about values, ideas, explaining decisions…you need that to be communicated really clearly to parents,” he adds.

Jennie Devine, head of primary at the Montessori School Almeria, also says she works to have everything translated - seeing it as the best way to get all information across to the entire parent community.

“We always translate all parent documents into English and Spanish at my current school and in all the previous schools I’ve worked in,” she says.

“That includes any communication that comes from the school: handbooks, forms, newsletters, informational fliers, emails and so on. It is important to make sure everyone has access to the information and that everyone feels seen and acknowledged.”

In fact, given the shift from ex-pat to local families, she says the biggest challenge she now faces is ensuring communications are available in the language of ex-pat families, rather than local parents.

“A real challenge is when the transient parents aren’t fluent in either the host language or the school language,” she says.

“Being timely with communication is important to allow those parents ways to engage with the communication. It is a very delicate balance because you want to share enough information, but a barrage of emails in a foreign language can be stressful and overwhelming.”

In-person meetings

It seems then that different locations and schools are at different stages of this translation journey when it comes to written communications - partly driven by what the parent body expects - underlining how this remains an area of change for leaders to grapple with.

However, for face-to-face meetings with parents, the situation is perhaps more straightforward - for any parent who does not have a strong grasp of English, there is no point in a meeting if they cannot understand what is being discussed.

This means that translators are often required, as Papps explains. “For really sensitive things - such as disciplinary or safeguarding issues - where we know information needs to be shared with a family who can’t necessarily fully access that in English, we would always use a translator,” she says.

She says that, sometimes, parents bring their own translators, which often makes the situation more confusing, and that she has “learned the hard way” to try to stop this happening otherwise “you can end up agreeing to something you may not want to”.

“We always bring our own translator even if [the parents] have as well, just for the integrity of the conversation,” she adds.

Ford, in Moldova, also says that using translators is key and can often have the added benefit of acting as an unintentional mediator during any particularly heated conversations

“Having a translator is really crucial because often a meeting can be quite emotional - it’s their children we’re talking about, so it’s understandable. But then when we have to stop and have it translated, it gives the space to pause and let the energy come down a bit,” he says.

“Often it can be that they’ve been speaking and the point they were making has grown and grown but then the translator just relies the key points that they are there to discuss, and that directs [the conversation] back on track.”

‘Having a translator is really crucial because often a meeting with parents can be quite emotional - it’s their children we’re talking about, so it’s understandable’

Keeping meetings “on track” and focused is a point that Hammond in Paris agrees with, whether through a translator or not, especially when meeting with parents on contentious topics. 

“If they’ve come for a fight then the last thing you want to do is give them one, so you can’t see the meeting as a contest - the aim is to help the child,” he says. “Explain quietly what is in the best interests of their child and why - and have research and relevant data to back up your point of view.” 

He adds that if you do use data or insights, it is important to ensure that, if possible, the information is relayed ahead of the meeting so they have a chance to digest and understand it.  

“These people are used to going to meetings and having all of the information at their fingertips - so make sure you have given them, ahead of time, all they need to know because they don’t have time for surprises. It also has the added benefit of looking like you know what you are up to.” 

Papps agrees that sharing information ahead of any meetings is crucial. “It’s a rare occasion that a parent would come in not really knowing much about a situation - I think that’s just part of running a transparent school and having trusting relationships with parents,” she says. 

This sort of relationship-building is, of course, fundamental to good parent- community engagement and something all teachers strive to do - and probably pride themselves on being able to do well.

Navigating different cultures 

In the international sector, though, there is the extra challenge in that there can be very different cultures to navigate - especially as host nation families become integral to international schools.

For Knight, in Bahrain, this is why leaders have to spend time understanding the local customs. “Once you understand the culture and the history of the place that you are in, then you can understand how to deal with the parents,” she says. 

“For example, when I’m signing emails to parents, I’ll often say ‘blessings to your day ahead’, which is not what we would say in the UK but here is really well regarded and goes a long way.”

Learning about the cultures and customs of a host country is part and parcel of the international school lifestyle, and can mean having to learn to be adaptable as you go too to rethink your own leadership style - a point Devine makes as well.

“One thing I had to get used to was the rhythm of meetings and encounters,” she says, reflecting on her time working in Latin America, Ecuador and Colombia.

“I tend to be quite efficient and not ‘waste time’, but in Latin American countries there is much more of an anecdotal style to conversation and making that personal connection is important, so an efficient conversation about their child’s progress might seem a bit cold or aloof,” she notes.

“Obviously, this is not the case for every parent, but some do want to know how you’re settling, your holidays and so on and that can mean sticking ruthlessly to agendas to get things done may mean that parents don’t feel listened to.”

Learning these nuances of cultures is of course something you can actively learn about before starting any posting of course - from reading online to talking to staff in a new setting or asking on social media if anyone has any advice.

Sometimes, though, it can only be learned the hard way.

One senior leader, for example, recalls a time when working in Thailand when a meeting with a parent on a behaviour-related issue concerning their child appeared to go well and end on an agreement about a sanction.

However, she subsequently had to have a meeting with more senior staff at the school who explained she had upset the parents and was required to “back down” from her position.

“I found that situation really hard to deal with,” they admit.

‘People are the same the world over…If you’re warm with people and listen to them, you can win their trust - and that’s key because schools run on trust’

Anecdotes like this are why some, such as Knight, say the art of managing the parent community is “best learned through experience” and that some people are more naturally able to “read a room” and how they have to engage with the person in front of them.

Mansfield agrees it is an area of leadership that is “best learned by seeing other people do it” - but adds that he believes the fundamentals of managing parent communities are based on some core concepts he believes can be taught. 

“What we’re tapping into here [on parent communications] is about stakeholder management and I teach courses on leadership where we look at this because it is so integral to what leaders now have to do,” he says. 

Meanwhile, Bell at COBIS says that, given the ever-changing nature of parent communities, it is an area his organisation is looking to deliver more training on for international staff as it becomes a more complex area.

“There is always space for more training and sensitive issues such as communications with parents is an area where more can be done.” 

Devine says it is not just leaders who can benefit from CPD in this area either, noting that for all staff explaining the cultures and customs and how they might need to “code-switch” when meeting different parents is vital.

“It is important to prepare staff with some of the cultural background,” she says. 

“There are some main points for each culture that need to be shared. For example, what is the cultural approach to time? Is time-keeping, punctuality and efficiency considered respectful, or is it a more flexible approach? 

“Each culture might have its own tendencies. While each parent may differ, having staff be aware of these tendencies can help them to calibrate.”

Mansfield concurs and says this gets to the heart of the fundamentals that govern all parent community engagement: “People are the same the world over…If you’re warm with people, give them time and listen to them, you can win their trust - and that’s key because schools run on trust.”

Get this right and it should mean that whoever is on the guestlist for the new building opening, coming to the parent-teacher meeting, attending a virtual Zoom call or arriving with their minders for an in-person meeting, are met as equals and an outcome can be achieved that works for everyone.

This is almost always going to get to the heart of how to provide the best for pupils in the school, which is an ideal that cuts across all language barriers.