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Encouraging parents into school
There's no doubt about it, the relationship
between parents and schools can be strained at times. The overwhelming majority
of schools work hard to include parents in their activities, but striking the
perfect balance can still be problematic. Tensions caused by discrepancies
between the level of parental involvement in education and the expectations of
schools and educators often make it into the headlines. Unfortunately, this
tends to distort the reality.
If your school would like to take further measures
to support its relationship with parents and carers, the following ideas may be
useful:
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Think about sending out a regular newsletter. Make
the design easy to read, eye-catching and, if possible, colourful. Perhaps a
group of students would like the job? Ask for parental input too, for example,
in the form of a review of a school event.
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How could parents, carers, grandparents and
great-grandparents support the curriculum in your school? What skills,
experiences and connections can you tap? Carry out a survey by distributing a
questionnaire or asking students.
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At the same time, ask parents what they want: what
would encourage them to come into your school?
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Make sure that your school parent/teacher
association (PTA) is alive and well.
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Aim to boost the number of attendees on
consultation evening. Some schools run raffles, selling tickets on the night
only, or put on a student performance of some kind.
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How about running a parents versus staff sporting
event? Or a mixed staff, parents and students event?
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Some schools run breakfast clubs. Your school
could run a teatime club, once or twice a term. It may be possible to get a
good deal for a bulk purchase from a local takeaway and the evening could
become a regular event to look forward to.
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Consider running a book club for parents and
pupils. Lots of books are suitable for both adults and young people, especially
those of secondary school age. Other after-school clubs could become parent and
child clubs too, for example, computer club, photography club and so on.
Skilled parents could help run the club.
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Run competitions: some parents may be able to
supply prizes through their work connections.
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Set up an Local Exchange Trading (LET) scheme for your school's
community. This is a trading network supported by its own
internal currency. Alternatively, your school could run a barter system for
swapped skills.
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Set up 'back to school' nights where
students 'teach' parents what they have learned.
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Run a secure discussion forum for parents and
carers on your school's website. Keep your website as up to date as
possible – students and parents might like to help out with this
task.
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Use a range of methods to get information about
your school out into the public domain. Local newspapers and radio,
notice-boards at the school gates, websites, school DVDs or videos and so on,
will all help your school to meet its community.
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Spread information about how parents and carers
can help their children do well at school as widely as possible. Some schools
achieve this by running special evenings geared to specific issues, for
example, helping with revision or Internet research.
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Run 'get to know the governors' evenings:
informal evenings where the governors can chat to parents about what they do
and about the school generally.
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Invite parents and carers into school, to watch
lessons or even take part if appropriate.
TeacherNet's area on Working with parents offers more information on forging
successful home-school relationships, whilst further advice and guidance is
provided by the National
Confederation of Parent Teacher Associations.
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