There is something I know we are not yet getting absolutely right at my school. It has been playing on my mind significantly over the past week and, despite burying my head in numerous research documents and reaching out to other colleague headteachers, I am still not entirely sure what the “perfect” model is.  

The issue is parental engagement.

Having spent the first part of my career in a workplace where parents were not heavily involved (prison schools), it has been a huge learning curve for me to experience the intricacies of parental engagement in the school setting. I have watched my team members nervously awaiting parent meetings when a pupil has demonstrated incredibly unproductive behaviours, and I have seen them asking another colleague if they can “do the meeting with them”, just so that they have some support with a parent they know is going to struggle.

Parent conversations

I have watched the fear creep into a child’s eyes when a teacher says, “I’m going to have to phone home about this,” and I have also overheard conversations from my reception area when a parent has called in to “have a word with the teacher”. The fear of a potential confrontation is present on all sides.

I knew this was an area I would have to tackle from my first week in the job. I was called to reception because I had parents “shouting and screaming” to see the headteacher. A colleague told me this while I was in the corridor speaking to some children.

I asked the colleague to request that the parents waited for me to be available and I would go down and see them. My colleague responded that I could not make them wait, it would end in chaos.

I knew in that moment we were getting something wrong.

Oppositional attitude

“Just let them know I am with some children and I will be a few minutes and I will come straight down,” I replied.

“I don’t want to tell them that, can you please just come?” was the response, so I began to make my way down.

Not quite knowing what I was walking into, I made my way through the school and could see my colleague visibly nervous. As I approached reception, I saw the parents looking visibly angry. They came to my office. We dealt with the issue and they left.

As they went, I wondered how they had felt coming into the school… had they felt welcomed? Had they felt important? Or had they felt like a nuisance? I knew it was the latter and I knew we needed to do something to change this.

Visiting parents at home

Working in a school where the majority of the pupils are either permanently excluded or at risk of exclusion from their mainstream school, we are already dealing with a lot of parents who have only dealt with their child’s schooling in a negative way. By the time the parents get to us they have (in the main) given up or are so used to hearing negative messages that they try everything possible to avoid engaging with us.

Despite the best efforts of my team members, there are still some parents who will not answer the phone, respond to a text or even read a letter or email. In some situations the home visit is the only way we can get to a parent and even then this can be fraught with difficulties.  

This is not even taking into account the number of familial issues we expect staff to be aware of, such as which parent is married or in a relationship with whom, which ones get along, which ones are involved with children’s services and at what level and who is not to be contacted. The amount of details in the family relationships around one child are immense, and teachers and support staff are expected to remember all of these in order to maintain positive communications.

Wrong turns

Sometimes this goes wrong. Communication within the school is paramount between colleagues, and between school and external agencies it is even more important. The line between a parent trusting a school and not is fine and our staff are treading carefully on this line every day. When the relationship is right the anecdotal evidence of the successes of that child are huge and the impact can most definitely be seen.

But even when we try our best, even when we think we have it sussed, it can be so difficult.

So I messaged a trusted colleague this week and asked about his approach at his schools. He sent me a long message with an extensive list of all the approaches they try. He gave me 14 suggestions which were new to me. This shows me that there is so much room for us to work more collaboratively on getting parental engagement right.

What we did

We have had some success ourselves, though. The most successful interventions and approaches I have seen in the past year are as follows:

• Share even the smallest success. A telephone call or text with positive news is the most successful relationship builder that I have seen so far. Some staff spend hours making sure they share positive news with parents;
• Ensure review meetings are held frequently and that staff plan for them effectively;
• Send positive postcards home as a form of praise that require no response from the parent/carer;
• Themed open evenings to include parents/carers with an extended time to “drop in”;
• At our school the open-door policy to speak with a senior leader has had a big impact on our parental engagement. This may not work in larger schools, but for us this has definitely made a difference;
• Clear demonstration of the lines of communication within the school. Who do parents speak with if they have a worry? Is it the tutor? Head of year/department? Assistant head? Make sure all your parents know who the first point of contact is;
• Do your staff have a time frame to work in to respond to parents? We had no guidance on this, so some tutors would respond on the same day and others a day later - this can cause inconsistencies in approach.
   

What we haven’t got right yet:

• How do we ensure that the language we use around school regarding parents encourages positive relationships?
• How can we put on a full calendar of events to include parents/carers without too much additional planning time for staff?
• Aside from parent view surveys, how can we really get a sense of what would improve parental engagement?
   

Leanne Forde-Nassey is headteacher of a pupil-referral unit in Hampshire