Dads and school involvement: could do better?

The nationally representative survey of 5,126 parents in the UK, was commissioned by Parentkind and administered by YouGov in June 2023 (48% of respondents were fathers and 52% were mothers).

The survey, conducted by Parentkind, is unusual because it gathers data from a representative sample of both mothers and fathers. That means we can draw useful insights from it, about both parents’ experiences. 

We’ve focused here on the ​‘school involvement’ section of the survey – because parents’ engagement with school may serve as an initial step that helps them understand, value and give shape to their own unique contributions to their children’s learning. This, in turn, may help improve children’s educational outcomes.

How involved are dads in school life?

Two-thirds of fathers (67%) responding to the survey said they had been involved in at least one school engagement activity during the last six months, compared to four-fifths of mothers (82%).

The most common activity for fathers was attending parents’ evenings or parent-teacher meetings: 59% of fathers said they attended these, compared to 77% of mothers. A fifth (21%) of fathers said they took part in school surveys or focus groups, compared to a third (34%) of mothers. A slightly higher (albeit small) proportion of fathers (5%) said they had been school governors or trustees or part of a campaigning group in the last six months, compared to 4% of mothers. For more detail see Table 1 below.

Table 1. How do fathers and mothers’ school involvement in the last six months compare?

All data is weighted to be representative of all UK parents (aged 18+). 

What stops more fathers from getting involved? 

Overall, fathers were more likely than mothers to say that they had never been involved in any of the school activities but would consider getting involved if given the opportunity — suggesting there are specific barriers to their involvement. 

More than two-fifths of fathers said they would consider being part of a group influencing school issues (46%); campaigning on a specific issue (43%) or taking part in surveys and focus groups (41%). More than a third said they would consider being a member of the PTA (37%), or volunteering time/​skills to school (36%). See Chart 1 below for more detail. 

Given fathers tend to work long, full-time hours for pay (e.g., Norman, Elliot and Fagan 2014), lack of time was the main reason they gave for not being involved at school (50% of fathers said this). 

Gendered beliefs about educational support being mothers’ responsibility may also play a role. In-depth comments to the survey from 130 fathers often referenced work commitments as a barrier, but also sometimes mentioned mothers taking the lead: 

“My wife gets involved in all this, so I feel like my views are already covered.”

However, there was also a sense from some fathers that they hadn’t received clear messages about how they could get involved, or information and support to encourage them to do so. A quarter of fathers (25%) said they had never been asked to get involved by the school and 17% said they did not know how to get involved; a fifth (20%) were unsure about their role in school activities and 17% of fathers felt too intimidated. 

It’s also worth noting that there were socio-economic differences in school involvement. Fathers from lower social grades were less likely to get involved in every school activity compared to their more affluent counterparts[2]. For example, 7% of fathers from lower social grades volunteered their time and skills to their child’s school in the last six months compared to 14% of fathers from higher social grades. 

It may be that if schools did more targeted work to ​‘bring fathers in’ to school-engagement activities, they would find themselves pushing at an open door.

Could schools do more to help?

Given that some of the barriers to fathers’ school involvement relate to uncertainty, lack of knowledge about how to get involved and feelings of intimidation, schools could help to engage and support fathers by addressing them directly in their communications, providing resources and activities that encourage dads to participate, and running father-targeted events that acknowledge and emphasise the value of their involvement. Our Paternal Involvement and its Effects on Children’s Education (PIECE) study provides further guidance for schools and early years practitioners on this.

Parents do not all have the same time and resources to support children’s education – as evidenced by fathers from lower social grades being less likely to engage with the school. This means designing school-involvement activities that are flexible in when they can be done and do not cost money (e.g., commuting to school); this would also help those who work shifts or long hours to engage at different times that fit around work schedules, and could also help those with health and disability challenges. Providing remote participation options, such as video calls for school meetings or alternative communications if families do not have access to a computer might also be useful. 

It is also important we challenge the assumption that mothers are (or should be) primarily responsible for managing and coordinating children’s care and education and it is only through increasing fathers’ home engagement and school involvement that this can change. If mothers are always positioned as the primary carer by the school, it can be a barrier to fathers’ participation in school activities, as well as to gender equality in care and education more broadly. 

Why does school engagement matter?

In general, parental engagement in activities to support their children’s learning, such as reading and play, are important for a child’s educational and behavioural development – and fathers’ early involvement specifically has been shown to have a direct impact on their children’s later attainment at school (e.g., see Norman and Davies 2023). Fathers are less likely to engage in such activities compared to mothers. For example, the survey found that about a quarter (26%) of fathers read with and to their children daily, compared to 37% of mothers. 

Closing that gender gap could be key to improving children’s educational outcomes: something that may be of particular importance in disadvantaged families.

[1] The nationally representative survey of 5,126 parents in the UK, was commissioned by Parentkind and administered by YouGov in June 2023 (48% of respondents were fathers and 52% were mothers).

[2] Social grade is a socio-economic classification system measured by the British National Readership Survey. It is based on occupation and enables a household and all its members to be classified according to the occupation of the Chief Income Earner (CIE). CIEs from ​‘higher social grades’ (ABC1) are in managerial, supervisory and professional occupations whereas CIEs from ​‘lower social grades’ (C2DE) are in skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled manual occupations, unemployed and the lowest grade occupations.

References

Norman, H., Elliot, M., & Fagan, C. (2013). Which fathers are the most involved in taking care of their toddlers in the UK? An investigation of the predictors of paternal involvement. Community, Work & Family, 17(2), 163–180.

Norman, H., Davies, J. (2023) What a difference a dad makes? Paternal Involvement and its Effects on Children’s Education (PIECE) study. Leeds: University of Leeds. https://piecestudy.org/toolkit/