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Few people today would deny the importance of parents being involved in their children’s education. It is now widely accepted that children whose parents are involved in their learning achieve more highly in school, and ‘parental engagement’ has become something of a modern educational mantra. But what does this term really mean in practice and, more importantly, how might the wide range of learning that takes place in families – including parental engagement - add value to children’s learning experiences?

Parental engagement lies close to the Government’s heart, not least to support its drive to push up standards and narrow the gap between children from disadvantaged backgrounds and their peers. It is one of the priorities of the Children’s Plan for 2009 (announced in the progress report, 2008), which underlined ministers’ commitment to helping parents and schools work more closely together. It is central to Every Parent Matters, published in 2007 by the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF), which emphasised that “parental involvement in a child’s schooling between seven and 16 is a more powerful force than family background, size of family and level of parental education. Educational failure is increased by lack of parental interest in schooling.”

But parental engagement is not just about parents getting actively involved in school life, helping out in class and on trips, joining the PTA, expressing their views through a parents’ council. It is also about what happens at home, when parents take an interest in and support their child’s learning. However, it should be noted that the focus is not wholly on school - research has shown that the most impact comes from parents valuing everyday learning in the home, and thereby encouraging and motivating children to do the same.

Chris Keates, General Secretary of the NASUWT, believes more debate is needed about the meaning of parental engagement. Although the work parents do on PTAs, governing bodies and parents’ councils is clearly valuable, she believes, if it is seen as the only form of parental engagement, “that is disenfranchising many parents who are intimidated by those kinds of organisations… Parents should not be made to feel guilty if they don’t want to take part in those kinds of activities, and there should be more respect for parents supporting their children at home, encouraging them to play a positive part in the school day.”

THE MOST IMPACT COMES FROM PARENTS VALUING LEARNING IN THE HOME

There is a danger that schools could treat parental engagement as something which they need and expect from parents, rather than considering parents’ own needs and finding ways of working more collaboratively with them. Judith Gillespie, Development Manager of the Scottish Parent Teacher Council: “It needs to be recognised that parents are not an add-on to the school, and the relationship between parents and schools needs to be about building a community, which everyone feels part of. Being involved will mean different things to different people.”

Approached in this way, parental engagement can be considered to be a part of the much broader and potentially more enriching area of ‘family learning’, which can bring benefits for children, parents, schools and communities alike. Family learning is sometimes misunderstood as meaning a specific type of family programme, but Juliette Collier, Head of Family Learning at the National Campaign for Learning, defines it in its widest sense: “Families provide a rich and natural context for learning, and the values, attitudes and skills that we learn from our families can stay with us throughout our lives. Family learning is about the whole family learning together. It is a learning experience for everyone, where adults are actively involved, not simply passive observers or helpers. It’s when it is a joint experience that it is really valuable to all involved.”

Family learning, then, happens when parents and children find out about something together – it might be first aid, watching a football match or taking photos - and talk about it. It can happen when they visit the park together, go to a museum or an art gallery, look at a building or go to the cinema. It happens when they sign up for a family class – in, for instance, ICT, gardening, pottery – at a school or community centre, learning and having fun together. But it also includes more informal activities such as cooking, surfing the internet and playing computer games as well as the daily activities of family life. And this learning is a two-way process - parents learn from their children as well as the other way round, for example learning to be a good parent, learning about subjects children are studying in school and learning to use computers, mobile phones and games consoles.

FAMILY LEARNING HAPPENS WHEN PARENTS AND CHILDREN FIND OUT ABOUT SOMETHING TOGETHER

Schools can have a part to play in this ‘family learning’, supporting and inspiring parents and families to engage in a wide range of activities. Juliette Collier says: “If we are really committed to developing partnerships with parents, as opposed to just giving them information effectively, we need to move away from a ‘we are the experts in teaching and learning’ stance and value parents as people we can learn from and as an indispensable resource in raising children’s achievement.”

Schools need to adopt a whole-school approach to working with parents, welcoming them from the first as their children’s ‘primary educators’, says Titus Alexander, author of the influential ‘Family Learning: The foundation of effective education’ (published by Demos, 1997). He suggests that ‘class meetings’, once or twice a term, are a useful way to build a relationship with parents and involve them in what their children are doing at school.

Creative projects in school, such as film-making, animation, photography, sculpture, carried out in conjunction with local artists through the Creative Partnerships programme, can inspire parents to engage in their children’s learning as well as start learning new things themselves. They are also a practical way to spark better home-school communication. A report by Creative Partnerships (‘Their Learning Becomes Your Journey’, 2007) found that many children were so fired up about creative projects that they talked about them at home, passing on their enthusiasm to their parents. Parents were motivated to get more involved with their children’s learning, visiting places such as museums and galleries with them, or joining after-school clubs or classes.

The Extended Schools agenda, which establishes schools as places where all members of the community can come to pursue interests and develop new skills, includes a requirement for schools to make provision for family learning opportunities. Carr Green Primary School, for instance, which recently became the first school in Calderdale to receive the gold standard for its extended services, runs a flourishing family learning programme, which draws in more than half of its families every year, including those previously seen by the school as ‘hard-to-reach’. Classes range from Spanish, painting and fishing, to ICT and numeracy.

“Of everything we have done at this school, family learning has had the biggest impact,” says Lesley Bowyer, the headteacher. “It’s made parents feel more comfortable about coming into school, it’s improved pupils’ attainment, and it’s helped parents support learning at home.” It has also led to some parents developing their own skills – for instance, in computing - and going on to take formal qualifications, which can improve their employment and life prospects.

“WE NEED TO VALUE PARENTS AS AN INDISPENSABLE RESOURCE IN RAISING CHILDREN’S ACHIEVEMENT”

Grandparents, too, are an important part of the family learning equation, often partially responsible for childcare and keen to find out more about what their grandchildren are doing in school. Oldham’s Family Learning Unit, for instance, now runs a ‘Skills for Grandparents’ course, in response to grandparents saying they wanted to learn how to send text messages and use digital cameras to help their grandchildren, as well as get up-to-date with numeracy and literacy themselves.

New technology can be a key way for schools to communicate with parents. A report in 2007 on the Engaging Parents in Raising Achievement project run by the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust (SSAT) found that schools harnessing technology to communicate with parents showed a potential for significant improvement. But the report also warns that schools “need to be clear about what they aim to achieve as technology is not an end in itself”.

The Government expects all secondary schools to be reporting online to parents by 2010 (and all primaries by 2012), giving them access 24 hours a day to information on their child’s attendance and performance. A parent could, for instance, log on at work, see that their child is taking a maths test and then ask them about it at the end of the day. What is crucial, according to Kirstie Andrew-Power, SSAT Head of Programmes, is that the technology enables parent and child to have that conversation. “It’s the conversation that has an impact on the child’s learning, not the technology,” she stresses.

About one million children currently do not have internet access at home, which makes some schools wary of online reporting. But other schools are arranging computer facilities for parents in places like community centres, and the Home Access programme, led by the Government agency Becta, is working hard to bridge the gap. In two pilot authorities, Oldham and Suffolk, the families of every child on free school meals can now apply for a grant for computer equipment and/or connectivity.

“We are finding that parents who wouldn’t normally go into school are coming in because of the offer of a grant,” says Nick Shacklock, Becta Home Access Programme Director. Schools need to back up the offer, he says, by providing classes to familiarise parents with the curriculum and by making good use of learning platforms to support pupils’ homework.

New technology can also be a good way to attract fathers, often more reluctant to take part in family learning activities than mothers. Tim Smith, an advanced skills teacher in Northumberland, has had great success with his ‘Robot Olympics’ days (loosely modelled on ‘Robot Wars’) which he runs for the Family Learning Service. Fathers flock to these events with their children, to spend a day building a simple robot and competing in a range of events.

“There’s always a moment in the day when the room goes quiet and parents and children are completely focused and engaged with each other,” he says. “It’s really lovely to be in the room when that happens.”

Further information

Futurelab’s Learning in Families project - www.futurelab.org.uk/projects/learning-in-families
'Family Learning: The foundation of effective education’ by Titus Alexander - www.titusalexander.com
‘Their Learning Becomes Your Journey’ - www.creative-partnerships.com
‘Engaging Parents in Raising Achievement: Do parents know they matter?’ - www.dcsf.gov.uk/research
Home Access - www.becta.org.uk/homeaccess
Online reporting - schools.becta.org.uk
Campaign for Learning - www.campaignforlearning.org.uk

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