Digital Learning

Bridging the gap between parents, pupils and schools

It’s widely recognised that the more involved parents are in their child’s education, the better the pupil performs at school. Here, David Burgess discusses how to bridge the gap between parents, pupils and schools.

It’s widely recognised that the more involved parents are in their child’s education, the better the pupil performs at school. Over the years, many papers have been written about the way a child’s classroom performance and academic achievements are significantly influenced by the extent to which its parents become involved in school life, and the interest they take in their child’s education.

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      string(467) "... a White Paperpublished in 1997, entitled‘Excellence in Schools’. ThePaper suggested that there werethree key points to improvingthe school-home partnership:providing parents withinformation; giving parents avoice; and encouraging parentalpartnerships with schools.Since then, there have beena number of strategies, policiesand programmes designed tobridge the gap between schoolsand pupils’ families ..."
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      string(5841) "FEATURESOver the years, many papers havebeen written about the way achild’s classroom performanceand academic achievementsare significantly influenced bythe extent to which its parentsbecome involved in school life,and the interest they take in theirchild’s education.Students respond very wellto parents participating in theirschooling – whether that’s justbeing aware of their progress andunderstanding their achievements,or whether its when parentsdecide to take a more active roleand become involved in the schoolitself. Either way, greater parentalengagement often motivates thechild to do well.But in order to establishand maintain this interest, thereneeds to be regular and reliablecommunication and sharing ofinformation between the schooland pupils’ families. Schools mustcreate an effective partnershipby providing an open andcommunicative environment withits wider community, forming alink between the classroom andthe home, and the school and thefamily.Full visibility of a child’sinterests, strengths andcommitments – as well asinformation about school eventsand developments – will putparents in a stronger position tohelp their child’s learning, and willensure children get the most outof the education system.Establishing an effectivepartnershipThe Government first set out itsstrategy for securing parentalengagement in a White Paperpublished in 1997, entitled‘Excellence in Schools’. ThePaper suggested that there werethree key points to improvingthe school-home partnership:providing parents withinformation; giving parents avoice; and encouraging parentalpartnerships with schools.Since then, there have beena number of strategies, policiesand programmes designed tobridge the gap between schoolsand pupils’ families, creatingan inclusive community whereinformation is communicatedand exchanged regularly,and personally. Home-SchoolAgreements were introduced toformalise the partnership, but thereal success of the relationship isdown to regular communicationand updates.However, it’s not just a caseof sending out leaflets advertisingschool initiatives and events;parents want to know that theirchild matters and is thereforemore interested in news relating tospecific individuals.The benefits of this approachare wide-ranging. Communicatingon matters relating to homeworkand passing on details ofachievements and rewards cangenerate positive relationshipsOpening communicationbetween parents, pupilsand schoolsFEATURESIt’s widely recognised that the more involved parents are in their child’s education,the better the pupil performs at school…between home and school andhelps combat the negative imageof schools contacting parentsonly when things go wrong.Sharing information about a child’sprogress can also mean parentsdevelop a clearer appreciationof their children’s true strengthsand weaknesses, while an opencommunication channel will meanparents can be notified early onshould their child be experiencingdifficulties or problems.Ultimately, allowing parentsto monitor and take part in theirchild’s education means they canreinforce the standards set by theschool, helping raise standards ofoverall attainment.The evidenceThis thinking is not just basedon theory alone. In March, Bectawarned that a communicationbreakdown between schools,parents and pupils could have adamaging impact on students’educational performance.Becta surveyed 1,000schoolchildren aged seven to14 and 1,000 parents to findout the level of communicationthat existed between adults andchildren when it comes to talkingabout school. It found more thana third of pupils had difficultyspeaking to their parents abouttheir education, while 43 per centof parents questioned admittedthey struggled to get informationfrom their child about their schoolday.Three in ten parents admittedthey felt ‘excluded’ from theirchildren’s day-to-day education,pointing to the fact parentsbecome concerned when theyfeel they have not been giventhe information they need. Infact, the report revealed 82 percent of parents want schoolsto do more when it comes tokeeping them informed abouttheir children’s progress, showingthat there is a real appetite foractive participation and greaterengagement.Tapping into technologyIn the past, messages from theschool to the home relied heavilyupon ‘pupil post.’ But this wasoften frustrating to both schoolsand parents as letters rarely arrivedhome in one piece, with many notshowing up at all. This methodof communication provided anatural barrier to developing anysort of relationship between theschool and the home, while thealternative face-to-face meetingswere a logistical nightmare toarrange, and as such, were onlyheld to mark important events.In recent years, technologyhas played an increasingly keyrole in bridging the gap. Parentsneed to be able to both receiveinformation from and passinformation to the school in FEATURESa range of ways convenient totheir circumstances. Schools andcolleges have been harnessingthe power of technology to openup a simple, effective channel ofcommunication. Through varioustechnology-enabled initiatives,contact can be established withparents, irrespective of location– so parents living apart, or evenparents living abroad, can bekept up to date with their child’sprogress or achievements.One example of the waytechnology is being used toestablish a better school-homepartnership is at Lodge PrimarySchool in West Bromwich.The school has been usingSchoolcomms, an automatedelectronic messaging system, toimprove communication withparents. Schoolcomms uses textsand"
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Digital Learning

Opening communication

11 Feb 2010

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      string(5700) "Vol 3.6 n www.teachingtimes.comSafeguarding: Daniel PelkaEvery Child Journal14The murder of Daniel Pelka in March 2012was a horrific and tragic affair. One of threechildren, he was singled out for cruelty. Thequestions remains – why wasn’t his deathidentified earlier?In Every Child Journal, we have covered a rangeof safeguarding issues, particularly in regard toschools. We have identified best and worst practice,celebrating good practice and learning from wherethings have gone wrong. We have even highlightedbest practice in carrying out serious case reviews.There is undoubtedly greater awareness thesedays of safeguarding in schools, which makes Daniel’scase even more shocking.Daniel: a brief lifeDaniel Pelka’s short life ended in March 2012when he was murdered by his parents. In Augustthis year, they were each sentenced to life inprison. Last month, a serious case review waspublished, uncovering a series of alarmingfailures across education, health, police andsocial care. In the first of two articles, TimLinehan examines the findings of the review.www.teachingtimes.com n Vol 3.6Safeguarding: Daniel Pelka Every Child Journal15“In the case ofDaniel Pelka ontwo occasionsthe police, whohad been calledbecause of violencebetween the adults,left childrenwith intoxicatedparents. Altogetherthe police werecalled 26 timesbetween 2007 and2010.”Police involvementUnravelling the long, slow journey a short life can take towards a cruel death at fourleads us to ask how such things can happen. Perhaps it’s because a busy inexperiencedpoliceman doesn’t know the history of a family, or is so used to outbreaks of domesticviolence that he or she is inured to its risks. Perhaps he or she doesn’t realise that children,even when they are not the physical victims in domestic violence (which they often are)are nevertheless the emotional victims.Yet we know so much from research about the links between domestic violence,child neglect and abuse that you wonder why this isn’t a larger part of police training. Ifdomestic violence, one of the most private forms of violence, takes up 20 per cent of allreported crimes, as statistics in some inner city boroughs suggest, what are the real figures?In the case of Daniel Pelka, on two occasions the police, who had been called becauseof violence between the adults, left children with intoxicated parents. Altogether, thepolice were called 26 times between 2007 and 2010. The police reports conclude almost‘off-handedly’ that the children were ‘none the wiser’ about the violence. Research quotedin the special case review (SCR) tells us that ‘living with domestic abuse is an incrediblyfrightening experience for children which communicates that violence in normal,acceptable and an effective way of expressing emotions or resolving conflict.’1If there is any mitigation, the special case review shows that the joint screeningprocesses were under severe pressure. The police had a backlog of 600 cases in Coventryand there were between 3,500 and 4,000 referrals a year between 2008 and 2010. Yeteven given these pressures, it seems that there is a serious need to review police policieson domestic violence. As the 4Children report, The enemy within, pointed out, up to 75per cent of children in some areas are on the child protection register partly as a result ofissues relating to domestic violence.The findings reflect the common experiences that children have of investigations intotheir experiences of domestic violence, namely that their experiences of the police arenegative while those of social workers and school workers are variable.School involvementIn this magazine, we have also profiled innovative initiatives that focus on raising the issueof domestic violence in schools. The programmes help identify children who may be at riskand to help them speak out and manage their own experiences.As a result of an earlier SCR in Coventry in 2008, a Domestic Abuse Pilot had been setup in local schools in December 2011 and was seen as a way forward to start bridging thegap between schools’ awareness of domestic abuse for individual pupils in schools andto consider how schools work with this information. Progress was reported to Coventrylocal children’s safeguarding board in July 2012 and noted that it had achieved positiveoutcomes for children in the schools included in the pilot.The school was not aware of the history of domestic violence in his family. The onlysignals that the schools observed were of Daniel’s emaciation, his scavenging for food(he ate from bins, stole from children, so much so that the teachers had to lock up theother children’s lunch bags), his bruising and cuts in what was, admittedly, a tragicallyshort stay at the school. Daniel’s class teacher confirmed concerns about Daniel saying hewas ‘eating and crying like a baby’. These too should have signalled reasons for a moredetermined investigation.However, this small close-knit school had inadequate safeguarding processes in place,resulting in such poor information sharing that no-one was even sure whether the injuriesthat were reported were the same injuries. By the time of his death, there were 40 of themmarking his skeletal body. On one occasion, the headteacher even asked Anna, Daniel’ssister he was so close to, to explain a particular injury of Daniel’s but she, caught betweenthe fear of disclosing family crimes and her concern for her brother, answered simply thathe had been pushed over by a child.Vol 3.6 n www.teachingtimes.comSafeguarding: Daniel PelkaEvery Child"
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Special Needs

Daniel: A brief life

21 Oct 2013

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      string(3361) "reviewed, is not explained by their rate of academisation. Ofsted’s annualreport (2015) points out that the weakest local areas vary considerably in the percentage ofsecondary schools which are academies; for example, all secondary schools in Doncaster andjust half of Knowsley’s have academy status, both poorly performing areas. ■ The performance of multi-academy trusts (MATs) generally reflect the performance of schools in Leadership BriefingLeadership Briefing – www.teachingtimes.comReports Summaries – a weeklyservice of essential summaries,in-depth reports and criticalanalysis that’s new and relevantto education, linked to originalsource documents.the geographical area in which they operate, with all but one of the most successful MATswith high levels of disadvantaged pupils confined to London, the South East and the WestMidlands (Hutchings et al 2016). DfE data (2016) also identifies two MATs in the Northwith above average performance – Tapton School Academy Trust and Bright FuturesEducation Trust. ■ Learning from those schools, academy chains, local authorities and MATs who haveperformed well can help schools and policy makers understand effective strategies forsupporting disadvantaged pupils. This is key to improving educational performance in theNorth because the challenge for schools in the North seems to be largely one of improvingpupil attainment for this group, even in schools which are otherwise performing well. ■ There is a significant number of ethnic minority pupils in the northern powerhouse region,many of whom are significantly underperforming in their GCSEs, compared with nationalaverages. ■ There are language and cultural barriers to pupil learning in some northern schools, whichmust be overcome in order to develop effective pedagogical knowledge and strategies. ■ In the case of ethnic minority pupils, bilingual teachers can play an import role in bridgingthe gap between teachers and children and parents for whom English is an additionallanguage. There is therefore a need for schools to ensure they have the capacity todeliver teaching in a range of languages, possibly using utilising native speakers wholive in local communities, as in the North West Consortium of the Routes into Languagesinitiative. ■ Previous initiatives designed to raise attainment and narrow the attainment gap betweendisadvantaged pupils and their peers in schools in areas of the North demonstrate thepotential of area-level initiatives involving collaboration within and between schools,carefully matched through analysis of school performance data, to improve schoolperformance. ■ Models of leadership in schools that can facilitate school improvement are those whichemphasise an over-arching vision, strategy and flexibility. ■ It is critical that national policy makers allow substantial flexibility at the local level in orderthat educational practitioners are able to analyse their particular circumstances anddetermine priorities accordingly.WEB LINKEducation In The North Of Englandhttps://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/571077/Northern_schools_Final_report.pdf"
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Leadership

Education In The North Of England

25 Nov 2016

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      string(2152) "1 in 7 (14.9%). Year 6 pupils at eight primary schools in Peterborough recently took part in an exciting writing competition launched by the National Literacy Trust Hub in Peterborough, Peterborough City Council and the Jack Hunt Learning Trust. Pupils were challenged to write an original story of less than 500 words on a subject that they are passionate about. Author and comedian Miles Jupp presented the winners with certificates and books at a special ceremony at Jack Hunt secondary school. Councillor John Holdich, leader of the council and cabinet member for education, skills and university, said: “This is another great initiative delivered by the National Literacy Trust in Peterborough. Writing imaginative stories is a superb way for a child to develop ideas and creativity at a young age and puts them in good stead for secondary school studies. I am sure the pupils will have an enjoyable and entertaining afternoon as a reward for all their hard work.”Partnerships with local events, author visits, a programme to support primary school pupils’ transition into secondary school, a ‘pop-up literacy shop’ and competitions and campaigns to drive awareness of the importance of literacy skills has helped the number of KS2 pupils who enjoy reading in Peterborough increase by 23.4% between 2014 and 2015, rising from 59.8% in 2014 to 73.8% in 2015.About the National Literacy Trust: The National Literacy Trust is dedicated to raising literacy levels in the UK. We run projects in deprived communities, campaign to make literacy a priority for politicians and parents, and support schools and early years settings to deliver outstanding literacy provision. Our research and analysis make us the leading authority on literacy.www.literacytrust.org.uk Jonathan Douglas is Director of the National Literacy Trust.Knowledge trails1.	Removing Barriers to Literacyhttp://library.teachingtimes.com/articles/ecu-14-reports-22.	Bridging the Reading Gaphttp://library.teachingtimes.com/articles/bridging-the-reading-gap"
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Leadership

Breaking the Generational Cycle of Low Literacy

16 Jan 2018