parental involvement

[Weatherforecaster]

How does your child's primary school involve you in their learning? I'm trying to improve my school's parental involvement or at least their positive feelings towards school. Teaching is good but admittedly communication isn't as good as it could be.

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At my ds' school in ks1, school provide maths meetings for parents to learn how they are taught these days, familialise with resources, etc., so they can help children at home.
They also make maths calculation handbook so parents can refer the methods school uses at home.
Also have session to help parents to learn how to use computer based learning platforms for children and how to navigate school website.

Not so much in ks2.

Thanks.

My children (DTs) are in reception and so far I've felt very involved -we've had a curriculum/phonics evening, and a one-to-one parents evening, there are weekly parent mail newsletters, the website gives details of what they've been doing every week, there is a tapestry website which has details and photographs of what they've been up to, and parents are encouraged to volunteer in the classroom for one afternoon per term.

Plenty of notice for any meetings and events - a little diary at the end of the previous term would be ideal. It doesn't matter if the events are the best ever if you don't give the 6-8 weeks I'd need for a day off work!

Parents are welcomed into the school from the start. When a child starts in the EYU, they have staggered starts, and parents are welcome to hang around for as long as the child takes to settle. Parents are invited in to 'stay and play' sessions in Early Years and welcomed as helpers, either on a regular basis or as a one-off, eg to demonstrate their job. There is a coffee morning once a week for parents/carers, and member of the SLT usually drops in for some of it. There are various evening social events aimed at the whole family, including a global evening where each family is encouraged to bring and share a dish from their home country or the county the children have been studying. Parents in KS1 are welcomed into the classroom at drop off time, for the 15 minutes before registration, to play, read, talk to the teacher etc. None of that is directly related to learning, but it creates a culture of parental involvement and communication with the school.

The school runs various workshops on learning, and there is a website with details of what each class in learning about each week. There is a whiteboard outside each classroom in KS1 with more information of what is going on, sometimes with photos.

There are a lot of opportunities to volunteer to help the school, including things like gardening at weekends which are accessible to working parents.

At my ds' school in ks1, school provide maths meetings for parents to learn how they are taught these days

We had this as no parent could understand how it was done. The method was so complicated the teachers who were showing us how to do it got even the simplest sums wrong everytime.

2 years later that method was scrapped and the old method was being taught.

Ds had a weird way of doing spelling tests. 10 spellings given to learn. Then for the test a sentence was dictated which contained none of the spellings he had spent all week learning. Ds has struggled ever since. It destroyed his confidence when he was given 0/10 each week despite learning all the words.

The following year that method was scrapped.

I wish they would stop messing around with learning methods. The new fangled methods never last and they return to the old methods everytime.

I appreciate good communication and being told on a fairly regular basis what progress my DC have made and what we need to work on. That allows me to praise at home, and support where needed.

I think it depends on the area, or the demography of the population.

As someone said upthread if you have a population of working parents, then things like notice of dates in advance is going to be a lot more crucial than if you are in an area of high unemployment.
If you have lots of parents who didn't have a positive experience of school themselves, then a LOT of hard work in the Early years at the school is needed - usually by a parent link worker who can start to entice parents into school for things they want first, before you get on to other things.
If you have a high number of parents for whom English isn't their first, or home language, then translators / home - school link workers, dual (or more) language communications are all useful.
If you have working couples as your parent group then evening meetings (for anything) help a lot. In other areas, people don't like to come out at night, and often have no-one to watch the dc if they did, so meetings during the school day are helpful - as is a creche if there's something you want parents at that they can't bring little ones to.

Some kind of parent forum with someone from the school who is on SLT is useful - you'll only ever get a tiny % of parents coming but other parents will often feed in to them and tell them things they might not feel confident saying to a member of staff.

I feel a bit of an outaider. My son is SEN and goes to a school 2 miles away and gets transport to school so I am not at the school gates. The school has a parent group but I can't come as I am looking after two younger children. I get information through a message book about whats happening most of the time but it depends on the TA. I also get info from a Facebook page. I actually know no other parent or children at the school apart from one disastrous birthday party we went to. It is actually a very good school - Ofsted Outstanding - I am just not particularly involved apart from parent teacher evenings (which OH goes to). I would love to be involved but I am not sure how .

Outsider.

Oh and from a learning perspective they out some random things in the bag and I have to figure out what to do with it. I am pretty well educated but sometimes I am like ?? I dont know how we are supposed to play a one board bingo game.

The above poster has touched on it for me; Welcoming parents AND any younger kids they have in tow. My daughters current school has not been great with this and I've had to miss lots as I'm a sahp with 2 younger kids. Again lots of advanced warning and good communication would at least give me a chance if finding someone to look after them.

DD's school has done lots of work on communication with parents this year (it was the biggest area of complaint) and I am really impressed with the results so far... examples:

• Everything out via email, no more letters in book bags (forgotten in tray)

• Email forms where you can sign the permission slip for trips/sign up for tickets/after-school activities etc

• Email surveys asking for things like what workshops would be helpful/what musical instrument tuition would be popular etc

• ParentPay so that said tickets, trips etc can all be paid for online rather than sending child with cash

• Class Dojo App

• Weekly e-newsletter with an upcoming dates section at the end and specific reminders for things in the following week.

• Class blogs

• All workshops and school plays (end of term ones) have two time slots so that working parents can attend as well as those who need things during the day. Workshops are on everything from Maths Methods to emotional well-being to dyslexia.

School is Outstanding, in inner-London with v high levels of FSM, EAL and SEN and about as diverse a mix of parents as you could probably get, which must make life a lot harder for the staff!

We get a weekly newsletter sent electronically (which includes a list of letters that we should have found in book bags)

Tapestry app

Grammar and maths sessions so we can see how they're taught and the resources used.

Notes in their reading record with how they're progressing.