Parent/carer engagement

Parent/carer engagement is important because working together (with mothers, fathers and carers) has been shown to have a promising impact on the wellbeing, attendance, behaviour, sense of school belonging, intellectual development and attainment of children across a range of social and economic backgrounds.

Working closely with parents and carers can be more difficult in secondary schools and further education settings. Parents and carers of older children tend to be less accessible to school staff as they are less likely to drop off or pick up their children from school. However, parent/carer engagement is very important for students of any age.

What schools and further education settings can do

School inspectorates will often look at parental engagement as part of their assessment of schools. It can involve a number of activities and actions such as:

• Directly involving parents and carers in their child’s academic learning. This can focus on building skills with parents/carers (e.g. familiarising them with the curriculum, building parental literacy, maths or IT skills) so that they can support their child.
• Helping strengthen parent/carers’ abilities to build resilience in their children and in themselves – reducing risks affecting wellbeing and learning. Some schools run programmes for parents/carers which aim to strengthen children and young people’s mental health or de-escalate common problems. Bear in mind that although parents and carers value opportunities to learn about mental health, the word can be daunting as there is still a great deal of stigma attached to it.
  • For children or young people with behavioural difficulties, for example, there is strong evidence that some parenting programmes help parents and carers develop additional techniques and approaches which, if used consistently, can help children and young people manage their own behaviour more effectively. These programmes can also result in improvements in parental mental health.
  • Putting on information/training sessions about a particular theme can also be useful. For example, running a session on academic stress, especially at times when parents/carers will be worrying about it.
• Noticing when parents/carers are in distress and considering how it may be impacting on their child’s learning. In a study of parents accessing Place2Be’s school-based parent counselling, parents said that discussions with school staff on children and young people’s wellbeing and progress had been a major prompt to getting help for themselves.
• Seeing every parent/carer contact (even if it’s a difficult exchange) as an opportunity to support protective factors, so they can work with you to help their child flourish and learn. Use existing networks and events to ask parents/carers how they are doing.

• Find ways for parents and carers begin to get to know staff members. As parents/carers become more familiar with staff roles, they will develop a trusted point of contact if they need additional support or someone to talk to. In primary schools this could be being available in the playground during drop off/pick up. For secondary schools or further education settings, a more detailed parental engagement plan may be needed, with activities like:

  • Non-academic-related social or ‘taster’ events for parents/carers to build up confidence and trust and help them to become more familiar with the school or setting.

  • Parent/carer ‘walkabouts’ in schools or colleges to familiarise them with what happens in school and what teachers are seeking to achieve with the students.

  • Uniform swap shops or banks. These sorts of activities and resources will help parents/carers feel more involved and can be useful for showing that schools and settings can be supportive.

  • Parenting support groups.

  • Parent/teacher associations.

• Being welcoming to parents and carers who come into the school; communicating with them in a non-judgemental and positive way.
• Having an open door policy for school leaders and making sure it is communicated to parents and carers.
• Identifying staff development needs and gauging how confident staff members are in relation to speaking to parents and carers. Making sure that staff are kept up-to-date about internal and external services that support parents and carers and have a list of services to hand that parents can be signposted to for more specialist help. The section of our website on risks and protective factors may help school staff better understand some of the challenges that children and families face and how staff might best use routine contact to help parents and carers link to support.