Research on the factors affecting parental engagement with school suggests the need for:
- A whole-school approach that is embedded over the long term.
- The school leadership to prioritize parental engagement
- To develop a plan for how you will engage parents - and monitor the success of your efforts
- For that plan to be built from an understanding of the lives of the families of your students. For example, through listening to them to understand what are the opportunities (or challenges) that influence how much, or how well, they can support their child’s (literacy) learning.
Here you can find a guide that explains the steps towards preparing, implementing and sustaining a parental engagement plan. Here you can also find a checklist for each of the steps to be taken, and an example of a prepared plan attached with a template for your school use. In brief, you can follow these steps to start the review process:
- Audit what you are currently doing to assess what is working well, and what isn’t
- Listen to what all parents, especially less involved parents, would find helpful
- Stop doing activities that are not useful
If you are a principal, you will find here a template to help you evaluate the partnership of your school with the parents, and this handout will help you understand the obstacles towards effective partnership between school and parents. Here you can also find conversation starters to critically assess the parental engagement plan and practices at school and with your staff.