Thursday

Parental Engagement

Jan 2012
This original post is from Jan 2011

Parents are, of course, the most important educators.
How do we, as professional educators,  pool our knowledge with parents, enable, empower and support them in understanding what is happening in school to deepen our partnership as co-educators and thereby give the best possible support to their child?
Technologies, of course, have a role to play and Becta have clear timescales established for when all schools in the UK should have the necessary provision in place.
Crucially, there is no 'one size fits all model' on offer.  All schools are taking their own approaches.

The approaches at Robin Hood to Parental Engagement involve high tech, low tech and no tech approaches that reflect the varying needs and preferences of the population we serve.

Website
Our website, from inception, was developed as a strategic vehicle for effective Parental Engagement.  many of the features operated like a 'Learning Platform', with the potential for two-way information flow.
  • School Policies
  • Calendars
  • Messageboards
  • General Information
  • Publications, eg: Prospectii
  • Class learning resources
  • Web-links that were used in class
  • Staff email contacts
  • Examples of pupils work were all stored there.
Class resources and web- links were key developments for us.. as they took the learning (and the learning conversations) beyond the classroom and into the car, the home, Grandma's house.  We found that entire families were engaging with the learning activities in the home environment.

Sometimes it's as simple as providing your greatest assets with the tools to do the job......

Newsletter
We send a weekly paper-based newsletter to all parents... with the Headteacher's news on one side and the class news on the other.  Class news includes details of the learning that has taken place in the previous week and, more importantly, what pupils will be learning next week... and where parents can help prepare them for that learning, eg: go to the shop, let your child pay and count to ensure they receive the appropriate change... which keeps local shopkeepers on their toes too...

Celebration Assembly
Our Friday Celebration Assembly is a showcase for our pupils outstanding achievements both in school and out.  There are performances by pupils every week.  This is a very well supported community event.

Celebration Friday
Celebration Friday changes the dynamic of a 'Parents Evening'.  In additon to 'formal', twice yearly Parents Evenings, we have a Celebration Friday event each Half Term for each Key Phase in school.  This is led by pupils.. who invite their relatives into their classrooms and show them the work that they are particularly proud of.

Parent Meetings
'Welcome to...'
Every parent is invited to a 'Welcome to...' meeting at the start of each school year so that they meet the new class teacher, learn of any changes to dates, timings and/or routines and gain a clear appreciation of expectations for the year ahead.
Parents Evening
Are held twice annually.
Meetings according to need
We organise specific meetings with specific groups of parents throughout the school year, eg: Parents of Year 2 children who are reticent readers, Parents of Year 4 pupils who are attaining below their full potential in Maths, Parents of Year 6 pupils in the run up to SAT's, etc, etc

Reporting to Parents
We made a commitment to parents some time ago to issue three progress reports during the school year.  Reports are issued termly and inform parents not only levels and grades but also, crucially, what the levels and grades mean, where these assessments relate chronologically and what each child's next key development steps are.

Texting and Emailing Parents
A are many schools, we are able to text and email urgent messages to parents.  Parents report that they value this service.

Learning Platform
At Jan '10, we are taking a strategic approach to developing our Learning Platform.  Our key questions are:
  • What do we need it for?
  • What do we want it to achieve?
  • How is it going to help us achieve our key aims?
  • How do we build a sustainable model?
  • How do we ensure the necessary capacity for continued development?
  • How do we ensure its cost-effectiveness?
  • What content/look and feel do we need in order to create a dynamic environment that makes parents and pupils want to come back and back again?
  • What information do we need to protect, and what could be freely available to the rest of the world?
Since the Jan 2011 post, we have added:


Blogs

Using blogs has helped us to connect at a far more dynamic level with parents.  There are micro blogs running for classes, and for specific topics that our parents are accessing regularly.  Our Reception class blog gets 100's of hits per day, 100's per week.
The list of blogs is at: http://www.robinhood.leeds.sch.uk/pupils/blogs.php

There is also a Headteacher blog with linked blogs for each of the phases in school, that explains Home Learning that that week, what's been learned in the past week and what's coming up for the following week, etc... that tends to get 300 to 400 hits per week... which is a very high percentage for a school with 367 pupils.
http://robinhoodnewsletter.blogspot.com/

Facebook
We also copy the blog into a Facebook page that over fifty parents at the moment are members of... which goes direct to their Facebook page and can, of course, be accessed on mobile devices as well as on computers.  Search robinhoodpri on Facebook if you're interested in having a look at this.

All of these methods give those parents who want it access and rich information.  As a school we , I believe, benefit a great deal from the social and community capital that communicating often through these means brings. 

This Jan 2012 update is replicated on my School Leadership blog
http://leadingschool.blogspot.com/

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