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GTC calls for new partnership to help parents support their children’s learning and achievement at Labour conference (11th Oct 2006).
Ms Adams spoke at a fringe meeting of the 2006 Labour party conference organised by the GTC and the Social Market Foundation (SMF). She called for a new partnership with parents to help them support their own children’s learning. Ms Adams said that parents need to be informed, involved and given the choice to shape the future of local schools. She said, that, of these three strands of engagement, helping parents to support their own child’s learning will have the biggest positive impact on children’s achievement and enjoyment of school.
The full text of the speech follows:
Given the recent strong news focus on children and their lives both in and beyond school, it is appropriate that we should be here this evening talking about children, their parents and carers and how we can build relationships that add value to their experience of school and learning as a positive and beneficial one.
At the heart of effective teaching and learning is the relationship between the teacher, their pupils and their parents. And just as the quality of teaching and leadership in our school is the key determinant of educational attainment, the degree and quality of engagement parents have with their child’s learning is the crucial factor outside school. Moreover, the simple fact is that the family has a greater influence on the child’s achievements and future prospects than the school.
I am going to approach the subject from the perspective of teachers and schools by asking the question “how do we as educators, support the child by involving the parent or those who care for the child, in their learning?”
Perhaps we need to pause and ask whether we are going to go on doing what we have always done, with teachers held responsible for academic development and parents for providing affection and support and ensuring readiness to learn? These elements inter-mingle in real life, something that is well understood in early years but seems to fall away subsequently. We seem to have created a compartmentalised form of education which ill serves a society as diverse as ours has become. Children don’t switch in and out of learning to fit a school timetable and their readiness to learn is crucially affected by what is happening at home.
So let us examine what we mean by parental involvement in learning. It seems to me it has three elements. The first is parents being regularly informed of their child’s progress, and having the knowledge of the education system as a whole to put that progress into meaningful context and act upon it.
The second is parents being involved in supporting their individual child’s learning and development.
And the third, which is the most challenging and exciting, is parents helping to shape their child’s learning in a dynamic partnership of child, parent, family, teacher and the school community as a whole.
It is the second of these I intend to focus on today because that is where I believe we have the most to gain in raising achievement. We know from the last decade and a half of initiatives led by schools and partners throughout the country that there have been some very successful, focused interventions to engage parents and carers in learning. Since 1997 there has been millions of pounds worth of investment. Thousands of teachers have transformed their classrooms by opening them up to parents and adult educators to break the mould of intergenerational underachievement and marginalization from school.
But I would argue that we need to go further in order to ensure effectiveness and change across the whole system rather than piecemeal activity The three strands of parental involvement offer the basis for a progressive national strategy which draws on the current initiatives and analysis of what works to enable parents to be informed, involved and to shape provision if they choose. Such a strategy must be aimed at all parents and targeted at the hard to reach. It must ensure that projects develop beyond a “feel good factor” to real learning gains. And diversity needs to be at the heart of this strategy, which means listening to the views of parents and working with those whose children have been failed by the system for years.
We know that certain types of parental involvement with their children can be transformational – for example positive approaches to behaviour, motivation, personal organisation and reading with their children. I wonder whether we have done enough up to now to really get the message across to parents just how important they are to their child’s education, and to explain how and why they make such a difference to their child’s achievement.
There are many different reasons why parents do and don’t engage with schools and the many different approaches taken by schools to working with parents reflect this. There is a major difference, for instance, between the parental experience of primary and secondary schooling and in both settings we need to make sure parents feel confident and know how to approach the school. As young people will increasingly need to be guided through the new 14-19 pathways, the need for parents and carers to be informed and to be able to support their decision-making beyond school becomes paramount.
Some parents who have had negative experiences of school themselves are apprehensive about interacting with their child’s teachers. Some parents deliberately stand back as far as their child’s schooling is concerned to give them a “blank canvas” in the belief that is the best way to support them. It can be a revelation to learn that just by demonstrating interest, by hearing their child read or questioning the child actively about their day at school, they will make a real difference. A further revelation can be when parents themselves receive training and increase their employability as well as the confidence and capability to support their child. Where targeted support is on offer for parents, including those traditionally “hard to reach”, or with low literacy and numeracy, the evidence shows that it works. Schools are very skilled at tailoring projects to meet local needs and the logistics of reaching some parents. What we don’t have is sufficient evaluation of projects undertaken, including how many have had a direct, measurable impact on achievement.
I have already said that diversity should be at the centre of this strategy. We know, and have known for years, that there are groups of children, such as black working class boys, Roma, gypsy and traveller children, who are under-achieving and have been for decades. There are encouraging recent examples of change and progress and we need to identify what works and to build on it, fully involving families and young people themselves.
We are talking about parents this evening. For looked after children, effectively it is the State who is their parent. Is it not an appalling indictment of failure in the system that these so called “looked after” children are among the least likely of any to succeed in education?
Teachers also need training opportunities to update on the latest knowledge and good practice in working successfully with parents and other professionals, like Parent Support Workers. Here is an excellent opportunity for schools to work together pooling expertise and resources.
It is parents’ interest and active support for their child’s learning that makes the difference and raised achievement. Parents’ support through the PTA and the governing body certainly helps the school enormously and is very valuable, but none of these things is at the core of improving individual achievement.
And to foster parents’ interest and support where it is fragile we need to target and support families with low literacy and numeracy, refugee and asylum seeker families, families in poverty and families for whom English is not their first language to equip them better to engage with their child’s learning.
There are many factors affecting a child’s progress where the school may be dependent on the resources of partner agencies. But communicating effectively with parents and engaging them is within the school’s control. They can decide how and when to go about it.
One example among many of very successful targeted work with parents is where a local education authority, Luton, turned around a situation where its school children were seriously under-achieving at the age of seven. They did it by targeting families as well as schools in the most deprived areas of the town.
Luton now has a multi-disciplinary service – Family Support Through Schools – that is having an impact on everything from academic achievement (these children’s results show a significantly greater improvement than the rest of Luton and are approaching the national average) to child protection and adult literacy.
But such success takes time. In Luton’s case, it took six years. And providing, as they did, an additional 300 pre-school places, full-time places for all four-year-olds and a family room in each school staffed by a Family Support Worker doesn’t come cheap. It requires political will and leadership backed up with designated extra resources. It also requires schools working with partners to do even more, and the willingness of such schools to address Every Child Matters through projects such as this deserves wider recognition.
To summarise, I want to see us moving to a point where all schools, properly supported by fair admissions policies and resources and a national strategy for working with parents, willingly accept whichever pupils come through their door and then set about working actively with parents, using a range of practical strategies to strengthen motivation and involvement in their children’s learning where it is most needed.
