Increasing Parental Engagement.
Parental Engagement and ‘Disadvantaged’ Pupils
Research tells us that effective relationships between schools and parents improve pupil progress (Coe et al. 2014) and that the home environment has a significant effect on pupil outcomes (Hattie 2009). The EEF talk about parental engagement improving outcomes by 4 months additional progress, more than setting or streaming, mentoring, reduced class sizes or even extending school time. Other research (Deforges 2003) talks about parental effects having a bigger impact than the quality of school. When you think about the effort and investment that goes in to increasing school quality compared with that of working with and supporting parents it’s definitely an area, we can invest more heavily in developing and should be a key part of strategies for improving pupil outcomes.
It comes up in a lot of conversations around pupil premium and inclusion. ‘We just can’t get parents to engage’ or ‘It’s really about poor parenting’. A lot of the barriers to engagement are greater for parents living in poverty and the importance of improving outcomes is greater for the young people in these homes - so, what could work? Is there anything we can do better to engage our ‘hard to reach’ parents?
A good place to start is to understand some reasons why parents may struggle to engage with school. If we can understand the why, we can start to apply solutions directly aimed at combatting some of these aspects.
Here’s some potential barriers to engagement – not in any priority order but worth thinking through whether these apply to your setting.
1.Logistics:
It’s not always easy to engage with school events. There are some logistical barriers which you are more likely to find if you’re a household living with some level of deprivation. There are a lot of households living below the poverty line where parents work long hours or multiple jobs, making it difficult to attend school events or meetings. If you work on a zero hours contract or in the cash economy then having time off to attend school may well mean less income and a direct impact on the food or electricity you can afford that week, even taking a phone call at work may be difficult. If you’re a single parent or your partner is working, you may struggle to have anyone to look after other children in the household whilst you attend school events.
2. Socio-economics:
In more deprived areas there is often a majority of households without access to a car. School events in the evening (particularly in dark winter months) or when less buses run become hard to attend, they may cost bus fare that is difficult to afford.
Some homes will have limited access to the technology that a lot of school communication and homework now relies on. This isn’t always around a lack of physical devices but can be because of data poverty and internet access.
3. Psychological and Emotional Barriers:
A couple of weeks ago I was sitting in a school reception waiting for a meeting with the Head. I watched the Gran of a pupil as she waited for a meeting, she was pacing up and down showing all the signs of anxiety you may see with candidates for an important interview. It reminded me how nervous some people feel about coming into and engaging with schools. Parents and carers who had negative experiences in their own schooling may feel real barriers when coming into school themselves. For some families, their experience of professionals has been a difficult situation with social care or landlords, and they harbour a suspicion of anyone in authority. For others the experience may trigger feelings of failure or fear from their memories of the education system.
Some parents may feel like they lack the skills to support their child properly. The National Literacy Trust says that 1 in 6 adults in the UK have very poor literacy skills with this number being much higher in areas of multiple deprivation. If you’re struggling with reading or writing yourself then coming in and getting involved in school may be a difficult experience, it may also mean that written communications through letters, texts or in a planner may not be fully understood.
It's also possible that as a parent you feel embarrassed or blamed for your child’s behaviour or lack of progress. You may feel like it is easier not to attend meetings detailing their struggles in school.
4. Communication and Information Issues:
Some parents have limited English and may struggle to understand school communications and to participate in meetings. They may think it’s pointless for them to attend. Hattie also talks about the importance of parents understanding the language of learning, education is set in middle-class culture and norms and as school staff we can sometimes fall for the ‘curse of the expert’ assuming everyone understands terms that are routine to us.
Lack of regular, clear, and accessible information from the school can leave parents feeling disconnected. This can work both ways – too little and parents feel disconnected but too much and it’s ignored. A friend shared with me that his children’s school had sent 8 different email communications in a day and too much can lead to important messages getting ‘lost’ in the mass.
School communication can also feel like a one-way process without much value being placed on the parental voice and input. Dr Janet Goodall has researched around the topic of parental engagement and makes this statement ‘parents that are hard to reach often see school as hard to reach’ that’s a powerful phrase to reflect on.
5. School-Related Barriers:
Recent survey data suggested that only 10% of school staff had ever received training in parental engagement. Staff are busy and not always skilled in building relationship and communicating or understanding parents. The majority of school staff come from a middle-class background and can carry unconscious biases and have a lack of understanding of the situations of the families they work with. They also don’t always have the time available or prioritised for building relationships and only get to communicate during ‘crisis’ points with parents.
During the Flaxmere project – a New Zealand initiative that looked to improve education and community engagement they found that two thirds of parents had aspirations at the beginning of primary school for their children to study diplomas and degrees. By the end of primary their aspirations were mainly for their children to ‘get a job’. It’s worth reflecting on how we can increase aspirations and ambitions of parents rather than decrease them.
So, if those are some barriers – what about solutions? What could work to help encourage parental engagement and reduce these barriers as much as possible?
1) Building relationship and trust
Working with parents is like any other relationship. We can’t assume an immediate connection and we need to work to build a healthy relationship and trust. We need to make sure we do what we can to make parents feel safe and secure in that relationship. Showing them we care about their children and doing what we say we will, when we say we will. Allowing time to listen and communicate.
2) Take a trauma-informed approach
We know that our young people are affected by ACEs and that trauma reactions can affect learning, school experience and future life chances. Parents will have had similar ACEs and will face similar trauma reactions, 67% of us have at least one ACE and the numbers increase for those living in multiple disadvantages. It’s important that a trauma-informed approach doesn’t end with pupils in the classroom but extends to parents and staff. With this in mind there’s a few points to consider:
· Be able to recognise the signs of a trauma reaction
· Increase a sense of safety in our interactions
· Have techniques available to help regulation
· Work to regulate and relate before you reason and repair
This paragraph just scratches the surface – If your staff aren’t trauma-informed in the classroom, I think it’s key to supporting behaviour and learning but also your whole organisation, we offer practical training for staff but there are also great organisations like ‘Trauma in Schools’ that I’d really recommend learning from.
3) Warm up parents
My wife has a background in fundraising and building long-term relationships with donors. There is a lesson from the way she worked that I think is helpful. They never expect people to jump straight to a strong support for the charity, she calls the principle “circles of heat”. The principle is that you don’t start straight off with a strong relationship but that you have to warm them up. There may be some tentative contact with parents at first that can then lead the way to more in depth engagement. Is there a way to get parents comfortable to talking to you first or coming in the school building for something non-threatening before you can then get them to engage more thoroughly? What small positive experiences can you give them to give them confidence about engaging more deeply.
4) Think like a marketer or salesman
It’s worth looking at some of the tactics of salesmen in persuading customers to engage with their company. As teachers we tend to feel like parents have an obligation to engage with us on our terms, with harder to reach parents that isn’t working so a more delicate persuasive approach may. Rober Cialdini’s research around sales and ‘powers of persuasion’ have shown a few key themes that may be helpful to bear in mind in our communications to draw parents in:
Reciprocity: People feel obliged to return things you’ve done for them. Doing a small thing for parents, a cup of tea, a chocolate bar with an invitation, a personal phone call – anything you do for others first makes it more likely they’ll respond positively when you ask them to do something.
Scarcity: Things become more desirable when they are perceived as limited or rare. “The last few spots are available to talk to teachers about your child.” “We’ve limited appointments, book early to avoid disappointment”
Commitment and Consistency: Once people commit to an idea or action, they are more likely to follow through and remain consistent with that commitment. Can you get small, easy first steps in place so that parents are more likely to follow through with the larger things?
Liking: People are more likely to be persuaded by those they like. Liking can be based on similarity, compliments, cooperation, and physical attractiveness.
Social Proof (Consensus): People often look to the behaviour of others to determine what is acceptable or correct. “Thank you to those who’ve already booked a parents appointment. If you’re one of the last few and still need to book then do so by calling….”
Unity: Sharing a sense of identity or belonging with someone can increase persuasiveness. “We’re both working together to make sure x is as successful as possible with his exams, we know you want to make it as easy as possible for him too….”
Credibility (Ethos): Establishing trust and expertise makes your message more believable and persuasive. “We’ve an outside expert coming to speak on….” “Our Geography teacher has taught revision strategies in three different schools now. They are putting on a workshop for you…”
5) Develop a communication plan
Communicating to parents, particularly those who are hard to reach or around key messages is important enough to plan carefully. A structured planning process forces you through the thought processes needed to make sure the messages have the best chance of being successful. A basic communication plan may include Goals, Your target audience, key messages, communication channels and tactics, timeline, budget and evaluation. An example template for a communication plan can be downloaded here.
6) Build understanding of your target audience
When companies, charities or political parties are looking at communication and engagement strategies they spend some time trying to build a picture and understanding of who it is they are trying to reach. During the 2008 election ‘Joe the plumber’ was used to represent the small business owners and middle-class Americans that the Republican party was trying to reach. The Mondeo man was an affluent middle-class voter that Tony Blair’s Labour targeted. What do you know about the demographics of parents you are trying most to reach? What are the key socio-economic factors in your catchment? Do you know if the average household has a car, is a single parent or works in a zero hours contracted job? We do detailed socio-economic analysis for schools to help introduce more understanding of the needs of their families, have a look here. Building a picture of who you need to communicate to helps you tailor the message and communication channels to make sure they are most effective. Sending paper letters to parents who struggle with literacy or don’t speak English is fairly futile. Schools are now releasing weekly headteacher videos or building communication on social media platforms rather than relying on the old trusted methods.
7) Listen to parent/pupil voice
We plug this a lot in our work with disadvantaged students. We are middle-class (mostly) teachers, often living outside our catchment areas and the communities we serve. We can make presumptions about the barriers to engagement parents and pupils face – they aren’t always right. Obviously, you need some level of engagement already to start this but asking parents themselves what the barriers are can be insightful and enable us to really target interventions at the right place rather than guesswork.
There is also that comment that parents who are hard to reach often feel that school is hard to reach. Communication involves two-way effort and listening. What opportunities do your parents have to reach staff and speak with them? How easy is it for parents to input into school life or discuss their child’s progress with individual teachers. Some schools just have access to a reception desk and seem to see incoming communications as a chore. Others have contact details for all classroom staff available and policies of replying within certain timeframes. How hard is it for parents to communicate with the right person on your staff?
8) Over communicate key messages and reduce the static
Remember back to the example I gave earlier about 8 school emails in a day? There is lots of communication that feels important but if it’s all communicated separately through a range of channels and at a range of times it can feel overwhelming and be ignored. What are the key messages that you want parents to know, over-communicate these and parcel the rest up in a way that can easily be accessed but doesn’t result in a constant stream of messages.
9) Train staff
Again, the impact of parental engagement is bigger than a lot of things we put a lot of effort and resource into developing. Only 10% of teaching staff say they’ve ever been trained in parental engagement. How can we make them feel more confident and skilled. I’ve come across very experienced and confident teachers who will do everything they can to avoid phoning home. Do we need scripts, structures or support around parental engagement? Do teachers need to understand the communication strategy you’ve built and to have some guidelines around where they fit in this?
10) Evaluate and review
As Dylan William said ‘Nothing works everywhere and everything works somewhere’. As you try different strategies to engage parents measure the impact. Are attendances at parents meeting increasing? Is homework completion increasing? Are aspirations rising? Measure the things you are aiming to improve and check what works. If it doesn’t then try something else, if it does then replicate the bright spots.
