Little Victories: New Parents Welcome!
We take a deep dive into the ways three English Academies and their PTAs are creating new spaces for parents to have a say in their children’s education.
Edgar Stammers Primary Academy, Walsall
Placed into special measures back in 2016, Edgar Stammers has come a long way. After a new executive head teacher and head of school were appointed in May 2018, Ofsted took the school out of special measures, recognising its renewed sense of purpose. Instrumental to these changes was teacher Lisa Littlewood, who worked to build new bridges between the school and parents.
“It felt like there was an invisible wall between the parents and the school,” she says. “It’s widely recognised that pupils are happier, and perform better, when their parents and carers are involved in school life, so it was really important that we broke down those barriers.” As Edgar Stammers had no PTA at the time, Lisa decided to create one. “I was reading information about how to get a PTA off the ground when I noticed that Parentkind also runs various courses. What really caught my eye was the course on parental engagement. With the Headteacher’s blessing, I attended the course and came away full of ideas and inspiration.”
Alongside her teaching post, Lisa became lead on parental engagement for the school, using she’d learned from the Parentkind course — including setting up a Community Hub. “The rationale behind the Community Hub was to provide parents with a safe place to seek support, guidance, and friendship — and an opportunity to develop themselves in any way possible,” Lisa explains. They partnered with Walsall Housing Group to provide workshops for parents, creating opportunities for obtaining qualifications, volunteering, and employment. It was a big hit!
“I’m really proud to say that many parents have positively engaged with the project – some are studying for their theory driving test whilst others have joined the ‘Waist Away’ weight-management programme, and collectively have lost three stone in weight. We’re seeing more parents getting involved in the Community Hub all the time, and it’s been a fantastic way of bridging that gap between the school and the parents.”
Whilst it’s still early days for the PTA and Community Hub, the difference between the levels of parental engagement six months ago and now is staggering, and the team show no signs of stopping!
“We’ve gone from having almost no links with our parental community, to many parents now taking an active role and involvement in school life.”
The Hayesbrook School, Kent
Hayesbrook was the first secondary school in West Kent to gain Academy Status in 2010, with the Brook Learning Trust. Since then, it has focused on working together with parents and the wider school community to ensure the best possible outcomes and opportunities for its students. One of the ways they manage this is through great communication and community engagement. The Trust’s Education Director, Nicola Taylor, tells us more about their exciting work. “As well as statutory monitoring roles for things like safeguarding and health and safety, we have a number of advocacy councillor roles, which are filled by volunteers from the local community — including parents — or through an organisation called Governors for Schools,” she explains.
How does this work in practice? “For example, our Parent Advocate Councillor is always available to speak to parents attending Parents’ Evenings, and will pass on feedback to our Academy Council – the equivalent to a local governing body. We also give parents the opportunity to fill out feedback questionnaires.” Nicola continues, “We’ll always follow up with parents who didn’t make it to the Parents’ Evening, on the assumption that the time and date wasn’t convenient to them. We offer to gather the relevant information about their child, so they can gain some feedback and insight into their progress.” Furthermore, the school is proactive in involving parents early on. “The Chair of Hayesbrook Academy Council attends the welcome events for families and always speaks to parents about what the Councillor roles involve.”
Another school initiative, the Family Learning Programme, has received hugely positive feedback from parents and students alike. “We decided to create specific, curriculum-linked opportunities for parents to come into school and work with their children. The key aims are to help parents to become more involved in their children’s learning, whilst gaining an understanding about how their children learn,” Nicola explains. To date, they’ve had small groups of parents attending sessions with their children across Maths, ICT, English, and DT lessons, as well as several cookery sessions, and a first aid course. Nicola reports, “The numbers are growing, which is really encouraging.”
“Enter into engagement with parents in the spirit of ‘parents haven’t been able to yet,’ rather than they are disinterested or don’t care,” Nicola advises. “This will highlight barriers to engagement in a more productive way and enable the school to make positive changes. For example, Hayesbrook started having two Parents’ Evenings for each year group; the first running from 4pm to allow parents who need to collect a child from primary school to come straight over to the event; the second running from 6pm to allow those who work further afield, or have other commitments, to attend later in the evening.”
“We want to ensure that these engagement opportunities are positive and focused on whole families, rather than being just child focused; we want all parents to feel that they are very much part of the Hayesbrook learning community.”
Nunthorpe Academy, North Yorkshire
Nunthorpe Secondary is an 11–19 Academy in the North East, educating around 1,500 students. Karen Deen, Chair of the Parent Voice Group tells us about the journey they’ve been on over the last few years. “Our PTA was originally named ‘Friends of Nunthorpe School,’ but it needed to adapt with the changing school and educational environment,” she recalls. “We were running a campaign called ‘The Road to Outstanding.’ We were rated ‘Satisfactory’ by Ofsted at the time, and we wanted to achieve ‘Outstanding.’ To get get parents involved too, we created the Parent Voice Group (PVG).”
The PVG functions as a problem-solving, decision-making machine, responding to parents’ issues, and giving them a voice in how the school operates. “We want parents to bring up any issues or concerns, so we can be an appropriate representative voice for all parents,” Karen explains. “Our PVG parents are so actively engaged — they want to do more than just the fundraising and fun, and be involved in decision-making.” This was crucial for key points of contact between parents and school. “After changing the format of the Parents’ Evenings, we wanted to know what parents actually thought of them. They’d give us the positives and negatives, and we’d discuss them, seeing if we could tweak the format for next year. We reassured parents that they weren’t just talking to the PVG, but that their views would be fed back to the academy.”
Another issue that arose was digital communication between parents and school. Parents weren’t happy with their information system at the time, facing fundamental problems such as not being able to log on. The PVG quickly stepped in. “We invited one of our Assistant Vice-Principals — who is in charge of communication procedures — to a meeting, and he suggested a new system for parents to trial. They went away happy he had come along and addressed their concerns, and they loved the new system, ‘School Gateway,’ which we’ve since converted to. The feedback we have received from parents on Facebook and Twitter is phenomenal.”
“By giving positive and negative feedback, parents help shape the running of the Academy. The parents feel valued by us, and we value them; we acknowledge their contributions and suggestions, and take action as soon as we can.”
After achieving their Outstanding judgement from Ofsted as they hoped, Nunthorpe continues to develop and better the student and parent experience. “Changes to academy policies are also discussed at PVG, and the Executive Principal is always happy to come along and speak to us about these. We have a wonderful set of parents, and it is a privilege to work with them,” Karen concludes.
With thanks to all individuals and organisations mentioned.
Remember it’s not just up to schools to improve parent engagement – you can do your part too!
- Want to create a community hub, or space to prioritise parental voice? Why not set up an online space for discussion, and take parent opinions via social media?