A new academic year, new line management and professional responsibilities. It is all to play for.
Late into the summer term our Prinicipal shared with me that I would be leading our ‘Parental Engagement’ strategy and in turn this was communicated with our staff. Starting point, where are we now.
I initially used the SSAT Engaging Parents toolkit to get a bearing on our Parental Engagement provision, discussed current practices with other SLT members and read through the case study examples. Even at this early juncture, it was evidenct that ‘Parental Engagement’ crossed the strategic responsibilities of every member of the senior leadership team.
Meanwhile, we adopted Web Anywhere’s MIS integration products, to provision our VLE and more importantly to share key information with parents. Under a tight schedule, we deployed the product, run a small pilot with selected parents and streamlined our first release. We also arranged a meeting and training support with ‘Contact Parents’ our truancy and texting provider.
Finally, I posted an advert in the schools newsletter, advertising a NEW ‘Parents Forum,’ as well as making emails and phone calls to parents with whom I had previously been in contact with.
Armed with this information, I wrote an ‘Engaging Parents’ improvement plan and submitted it to our Principal. I left for the summer with plenty still to learn and plenty still do.
So, here is what I have learnt over the summer…
The term ‘parent’ encompasses all parents, guardians and carers.
The single most important fact, ‘parents matter,’ and from now on, this will be my default response to why we are investing our time and resources in parental engagement. It is a mantra I will expect our staff to subscribe to.
Every teacher, every Community Leader, every learning support member of staff and most of the support staff, including those staff that do not have direct personal contact with parents, guardians and carers need to know our schools vision for Parental Engagement.
There is no easy formula to follow, no one size fits all, every relationship counts. We need to know our students, now our parents and know our community. In fact, think Personalised Learning Plans for students, and then think Personalised Parent Engagement Plans.
Parental engagement is more than effective communication, which although important, has little impact on student achievement. Listening and responding to parents is a step in the right direction, however it is about empowering parents to support their children’s learning in the best possible way that makes the difference. Its about connecting parents with their children’s learning.
Two-way dialogue is enhanced as it is acted upon. The ‘you asked for’ and ‘we delivered’ type dialogue.
One challenge is to flip the ‘hard to reach’ tag some parents as assigned and question are we approachable?
Parental engagement is positively influenced by the child’s level of attainment; the higher the level of attainment, the more parents get involved.
Next steps…
I need to go back to the ‘Improvement Plan,’ and impress the importance of ’empowering parents to support their children’s learning in the best possible way’ and to broaden the plans scope. There is more to ‘Parental Engagement’ than communication.
We have our first ‘informal’ Parents Forum meeting this coming week, I need to listen carefully and act quickly on the issues raised in this meeting.
I need to underline commitment to ‘Parental Engagement’ at our information evenings.
I need to share and communicate the parent engagement vision and expectations within the school to ALL staff. To inform staff and more importantly to amplify the core messages….. parents matter.
My personal thanks to Kirstie Andrew-Power at The Schools Network.
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