“Effective parental engagement” is all the rage. Ensuring that “parents are partners” is right at the top of most school-improvement agendas, especially when it comes to closing the attainment gap.
So why are schools making such a rubbish job of it? Surely it can’t be that hard. Send home a few newsletters, host a few open afternoons, keep the social media channels brimming with smiley status updates. If parents know what’s happening in the school they must be engaged, right?
Wrong. 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. Neither is 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. It is not reasonable to make judgements about families based on how many cookies they manage to bake for the school fair.
Quick read: ‘Treat parental engagement like a marriage’
A teacher’s view: ‘I changed how I teach after becoming a parent’
The parents’ view: What do parents think makes the biggest difference to pupil outcomes?
And yet, this is the model for parental engagement seen most often in schools. Opportunities are offered on two fronts: behind door number one are “come and sit in the audience while we tell you what’s good for your child” information evenings; behind door number two is an endless list of menial tasks - scone baking, book stamping, weeding the school garden and everything in between. And don’t even get me started on what’s wrong with parents’ night.
Parents with the time, energy and capacity to attend meetings and knock up the odd Victoria sponge cake will be seen as supportive. Parents who don’t are seen as “hard to reach”.
The problem is, none of this is building any emotional capital whatsoever.
Most of the time, most parents just want to know their kids are happy and are doing OK. If the school can satisfy them this is the case, things will roll along just fine. But what happens when there is a bump in the road? When their child isn’t happy or isn’t doing OK? When big emotions start throwing their weight around, schools need a solid relationship with the family to fall back on so things can get sorted out.
Getting to know parents and showing them what you are all about should be the bread and butter of all schools. We should be friendly, open, encouraging and willing to listen, even when what parents say is not what you want to hear. Schools need to walk in the shoes of working parents and make being part of the life of the school as easy as possible. Ask parents what they want to know about their child’s learning. Build flexible family opportunities so that new initiatives have context and meaning. Find out what talents and experiences parents and wider families could share and use these to enhance the work of the school.
Schools that hold parents at arm’s length are missing a trick. So let’s call off the inconsequential “engagement” and get real about how we can truly make pupils’ families part of school life.
Susan Ward is depute headteacher at Kingsland Primary School in Peebles, in the Scottish Borders. She tweets @susanward30
