10 Practical Ideas to help improve Parental Engagement

We recently surveyed many hundreds of teachers and head teachers to find out their thoughts on Parental Engagement in a child’s education – many thanks to those of you who kindly took part.

We asked three questions and asked teachers to rate their answers out of 5:-

1.      How important do you think parental engagement is to a child’s education? (1 = not at all, 5 = very important) RESULT: 4.8/5

2.      Would you like to encourage more parents to get involved and help reinforce what children have learnt at school? (1 = not at all, 5 = We’d love it) RESULT: 4.8/5

3.      Do you think parents know how to help their children at home? (1 = not at all, 5 = very much so) RESULT: 2.4/5

In other words, we all believe parental engagement is very important and would love to encourage more of it, but we think parents are unsure how to help.

An extensive study carried out in the UK in 2003 by Professor Charles Desforges showed that what parents do with their children at home “has a significant positive effect on children’s achievement” and “In the primary age range the impact caused by different levels of parental involvement is much bigger than differences associated with variations in the quality of schools. The scale of the impact is evident across all social classes and all ethnic groups.”  

So the big question is how to get more parents involved with their children’s education?

First we need to understand what stops parents being involved with their child’s education and it could be any combination of things such as:-·        

• Personal bad experience at school puts parents off coming into their child’s school
• Lack of available time - too busy working, work unsociable hours etc.
• Lack of own education, so parents feel intimidated by teachers
• Lack of vested interest – they don’t realise the impact they can have and so leave it up to teachers
• Change in the education system – children are taught differently than when they were at school
• Unfamiliar with what children should be learning and don’t want to challenge their kids further
• Poor relationship between school and parents – parents believe they are not valued/teachers think parents are uninterested.
• Social issues – language barriers, addiction, mental health problems etc.

There may be some issues that can’t be solved easily but here are 10 practical ideas to help get parents more involved:-

1. Encourage parents to come into school – not just for parent’s evenings but for fun social events such as fund raisers, fayres, PTA events, volunteering to listen to children reading, game clubs etc. Let parents see that your school can be a fun, happy and welcoming place to be, staffed with honest, open and friendly teachers.
2. Hold workshops to help parents understand how subjects are taught in school, but in a non-intimidating way and post them online so parents can catch up whenever they like e.g. a basic maths night or a literacy learning session.  
3. Highlight the benefits of their involvement and explain the importance of their attitude. For example if a parent says “I’ve never been any good with numbers”, how can they expect their children to be any different? Parents are role models for their children and having a positive attitude to education sets them a great example.  Newsletters, website parent’s pages, twitter accounts, parent’s evenings etc. can be used to explain the importance of their involvement no matter what their educational ability, socio economic standing etc. 
4. Run events in the evenings or weekends to try and accommodate working parents. For those who are unable to attend events make sure all information is obtainable via a school blog or parent page on the website that they can access (and respond to) in their own time.
5. Invite parents to be involved in the school – PTA’s, governing bodies, workgroups, giving demonstrations/talks about their skills etc. so they feel that their views matter – they are more likely to help if they feel valued AND their children are more likely to let them if there is a good relationship existing between parents and teachers
6. Engender an open door policy (at specific times)for parents. You don’t want parents to come into school daily but you do want to make them feel like they can approach you if there is something bothering them or if they want to ask questions. Maybe the teacher is always around for 15 minutes at the end of each day to answer questions 
7. Have a home/school agreement whereby parents understand and sign up to their responsibilities when a child starts at the school so they are clear about what you’d like them to do.
8. Provide parents with a list of expectations or required mastery skills for each subject, at each grade/class level to help parents understand whether their child needs additional help in specific areas.
9. Give parents ideas of how to help at home via website articles and resource links. Parents often know how to help with literacy: listening to their child read (& completing reading diary), testing weekly spellings, encouraging them to write a story etc. but very few know how or are comfortable helping with numeracy. They need some easy practical ideas of things they can do:-

• Playing proven maths games with their children not only re-enforces learning, but can also be great fun for the whole family – and face to face games also improve social skills.  
•  Reminding parents that there can be maths practice in everything that they already do at home - from asking how long until bedtime, to calculating spending money, to helping to weigh out ingredients - and encouraging them to talk about numbers positively with their children. Encourage parents to share ideas on a website blog/twitter page etc.

10.       Ask for feedback from parents to understand what they want from the school to allow them to be more involved. Obtaining feedback after workshops or at parent’s evening checks that they’re engaged and that you’re not wasting your time. Feedback from parents that do not normally get involved with school may highlight a particular issue such as mobility or language problems which could be addressed once you know about them.

This is a short list of ideas but if you have any additional tips that have worked in your school to improve parental engagement please share them in the comments below.

About me & PLYT Games - I’m Chief Plyter at PLYT Games and we provide mentally stimulating games for the whole family. The PLYT board game has been proven to improve maths of both children and adults and increases confidence with numbers. For more information or details of our school & parent discounts and PLYT courses please see our website or I can be reached at [email protected] 

#ParentalEngagement #schools #surveyresults #toptips