Parental Engagement – Has the pandemic changed how parents see their child’s school?
John Jolly looks at how parents have become increasingly invested in what their child is learning – and at what secondary schools can do to capitalise on that…
- by John Jolly
Whether they liked it or not, once the pandemic struck, parents suddenly became more involved than ever before in their children’s learning.
Via a series of polls conducted over the following months, we asked parents how they were coping with those long, long periods of overseeing learning at home.
At first, there was a palpable sense of panic – how on Earth had they ended up supervising all schoolwork? How were they meant to juggle holding down jobs and other commitments with ensuring their offspring could continue to learn? Throughout the upheaval, parents experienced a whole range of emotions.
By the time schools fully reopened, however, one thing had become clear – parents were no longer just counting down the days to getting their lives back, but had found positives from having their children studying at home.
Now that the genie’s out the bottle, it won’t easily be persuaded back inside. Parents now see themselves as more ingrained in their children’s learning and they want it to stay that way – something that opens up the potential for schools to utilise parental participation in whole new ways.
Knock-on effect – positive impacts and parental involvement
After schools closed their doors to most pupils in March 2020, we launched an online poll to check in with parents, find out what support they needed and ensure their voice was being heard during the crisis.
In our first survey, parents registered an average score of 6.8/10 when rating how worried they were about the impact coronavirus was having on their children’s education.
That average figure was taken across England, Wales and Northern Ireland, with secondary parents more likely to be concerned, and parents of Y11 most concerned of all, averaging out at an alarming 8.3/10.
More than three quarters of respondents felt that the pandemic would affect their child’s education, citing children falling behind or missing out on learning, cancellation of exams and the lack of socialisation as their top concerns.
Many parents were having to deal with their children’s anxieties while at the same time meeting work commitments and addressing worries concerning their household’s financial security – as well as coping with the knock-on effect on their family’s collective mental health and overall stress levels.
Lack of confidence – parental skills and pupil attainment
By the time of our second coronavirus survey in May 2020, the fallout around school closures was gathering momentum in the news.
Our finding that two thirds of parents were as worried, or more worried about the impact of the pandemic on their child’s education since the start of school closures was shared widely among education stakeholders, including teaching unions and the DfE.
We received over quarter of a million responses, demolishing the target we’d set of a few thousand. Rather worryingly, however, the survey also found that 34% of parents lacked at least some degree of confidence in supporting their child’s learning.
Parents’ anxieties over school closures and remote learning subsequently became big news. In January 2021, ITV News and the BBC’s Panorama programme were among those citing what was then our most recent research finding – that a third of parents had told us that juggling home schooling with having to work from home themselves was proving challenging.
However, when we came to conduct our February 2021 poll – which asked parents for details of any positives that had emerged from their children’s experiences of remote learning during lockdown – we were delighted to find that almost two thirds stated being more aware of what their child was learning.
34% also expressed positive views regarding their school’s use of technology, via innovations such digital parents evenings – with the result that there are now many parents who wish to retain such avenues for engaging with teachers into the future.
Outside of their original pandemic-related purpose, such solutions can help tackle the barriers preventing some parents with a bad experience of education from setting foot in their children’s school, while also saving time and effort for those with busy lives and competing commitments.
Family learning anxieties allayed
In that same February 2021 poll, just over a quarter indicated that they were more worried about the impact of the pandemic on their child’s education than they had been in March 2020. A similar proportion felt roughly the same level of worry, but around 45% stated that they were now less worried.
That may have been because their anxieties were allayed by the satisfaction they felt with their schools’ remote learning provision, with 86% reporting being satisfied overall.
Nearly a year into the pandemic, it could have due to their children becoming more settled into their new routines. More than half said they were coping better with their current learning arrangements compared to the first lockdown.
Parents’ confidence had increased, too. 79% now felt they could support their child’s learning at home, up from 66% in May 2020. Overall, we saw a more positive picture of life at home start to emerge, after all that they’d been through.
A new appreciation for high-quality teaching
At the time of writing, in June 2021, we have many reasons to feel positive about the future of parental participation in children’s schooling. Many parents have been able develop a deeper knowledge of the productive role they themselves can play in their child’s education.
They have also acquired a new appreciation of the dedication shown by teachers, and overwhelmingly believe that staff and school leaders have done their utmost to keep their children’s learning on track – difficult though it has been to return with no learning loss at all.
The recent introduction of legislation requiring schools in England to consult parents on their RSE policies will be a useful bellwether. It will indicate how quickly and thoroughly schools can adjust to having parents become more deeply involved in those education conversations and the issues that affect them.
We’d like to see school leaders take this time – when there’s a parent community out there that’s keen on staying involved – to maximise their parental engagement strategy. The key to helping children reach their potential is having schools and homes working in close partnership.
We’ve tried it over this past year, and have seen vividly the great things that can be achieved by having parents and teachers working closely together and sharing mutual trust.
At this crucial juncture, as we confront the difficult task of education recovery and ensuring our young people can catch up on their lost learning, it’s more vital than ever that schools keep parents on board and ensure that two-way conversation keeps flowing.
Involvement of parents – giving them a voice
As a national charity, Parentkind gives those with a parenting role a voice in education.
We invest substantial resources in representing parent views on their child’s learning to local, regional and national governments and agencies, because evidence tells parental participation in education benefits all children in all schools and society as a whole.
Parentkind is the largest network of PTA fundraisers in the UK. We bring specialist fundraising support and advice to parent volunteers so that every school can benefit from a successful PTA. Our 13,000 PTA members raise over £120+ million per year, placing us alongside some of the largest charities in the UK.
John Jolly is CEO of Parentkind; for more information, visit parentkind.org.uk or follow @parentkind.
Download Parentkind’s Blueprint for Parent-Friendly Schools from here.
