Learning is a team effort. And every parent matters.
- Euan
- Apr 24
- 15 min read
Creating a culture where schools are helping parents to play a powerful role in their child's education, so that learning thrives at home and in school.
Your child comes home from school and asks for help with their maths homework. You freeze. You don’t remember this from your own school days. And even if you do, they’re doing it differently now. Sound familiar?
Many parents feel this way. Especially in secondary school, where GCSEs, Highers, A Levels, or the IB Diploma can seem like a foreign language. The assumption is that, to help, you need to understand the subject. You need to be the expert.
You don’t.
This is one of the biggest myths about supporting children’s learning. Every parent matters in learning. What really matters isn’t your knowledge of the content, it’s your presence. Your encouragement. The simple things, like asking about their day, bringing a snack, nudging them to stick with that revision plan.
That’s what we mean by parental engagement. And it makes a huge difference.
At &Parents, we work with schools and families to shift this thinking. Because the truth is: your role as a parent in learning is powerful. And it's often misunderstood.
Let’s change that.
Understanding parental engagement.
Parental engagement isn’t a buzzword. It’s one of the most reliable predictors of student success, yet, it’s so often misunderstood.
As an experienced educator and school leaders with over a decade's experience, alongside my doctoral research, I can say with confidence, "when parents engage with their child's learning, everyone benefits." But first, we need to be clear about what engagement really means.
What is parental engagement?
Parental engagement is not necessarily about helping with homework or attending every school performance. It’s a collaborative relationship between parents and educators. A relationships that supports a child’s learning both in and out of the classroom. It’s not about doing the learning for them; it’s about being curious, encouraging effort, and reinforcing the idea that learning matters.
At its best, engagement is ongoing, relational, and respectful. It adapts as children grow, and it reflects the values of a partnership: communication, consistency, and care.
Not involvement, not participation... Engagement.
It’s important to separate this from two commonly confused terms.
Parental involvement refers to school-based activities. This includes attending parents' evenings, signing planners, volunteering for trips, or joining the PTA. These actions are valuable, but they don't necessarily connect parents to the learning itself.
Parental engagement, on the other hand, is about what happens at home and in the everyday. It’s checking in about school, not grades, but how things feel. It’s creating space for revision. It’s celebrating progress, not only results.
As Goodall and Montgomery (2014) argue, engagement moves “beyond school gates” and into the heart of the home.
A shift in thinking.
Over the last decade, we’ve seen a slow but meaningful shift in some schools. Effective schools are no longer asking, “How can we get more parents to come to events?” Instead, they’re beginning to ask, “How can we build trust? How can we co-create learning cultures that include families?”
This evolution is partly due to increasing recognition in both research and policy that parents aren’t external to learning, they’re central to it. Particularly during the pandemic, when learning moved into the home, the traditional boundaries blurred. What became obvious was this: the role of parents isn’t supplementary, it’s an essential part of the parent-school-child relationship.
As an even better if, schools can be going further to ask "How can we co-create learning cultures that include all families?”
What the research tells us.
There’s no shortage of evidence, probably more so in physical or traditional settings.
Studies report that students with engaged parents attend school more regularly, achieve higher academically, and develop stronger social skills (Education Endowment Foundation, 2021; Jeynes, 2012).
The OECD also notes that parental engagement is a key lever for equity in education systems, especially for disadvantaged students who may not have access to additional academic support (OECD, 2023).
Closer to home, one of the themes emerging from my own doctoral research is this: even when parents don’t feel confident in the curriculum, their belief in their child, and their visible interest in learning, make a measurable difference.
It’s not about doing the work. It’s about showing that learning is valued.
And that is where the magic happens.
Strategies and practices for effective engagement.
Parental engagement does not happen on its own or overnight. It needs to be nurtured through clear strategy, purposeful action, and a strong understanding of family life.
Drawing from my experience of different school settings, working with thousands of families, and understanding what’s emerging in current research (including my doctoral case study on international online schooling), here’s what works and what doesn’t when it comes to engaging parents meaningfully in learning.
What works: strategies that make a difference.
Communication that goes both ways.
Open, honest, and consistent communication is the bedrock of parental engagement. But too often, it’s a one-way flow including emails, newsletters, announcements. Effective engagement means listening as well as informing. Parents want to feel seen and heard.
This could be as simple as setting and managing expectations from the outset, regular check-ins, and feedback opportunities. In online settings especially, where informal contact at the school gate disappears, digital tools must be used with intention, being timely, personal, and accessible.
Practical tools, not just theories and hypotheticals.
Workshops that help parents understand how to support learning, without expecting them to become teachers, are powerful. Think: how to help your child stay organised, how to create a calm study space, how to spot early signs of stress, and what can you do about it.
Resources that build confidence, especially for secondary school parents, go a long way. They often want to help but don’t know how. That’s a gap schools can close.
Remember, the most effective schools determine ways in which to include all families.
Celebrating diversity and supporting equity.
Family structures, cultures, and experiences vary widely and will influence what a parent's engagement in learning means from one parent to another. Schools that actively reflect and respect this: through language accessibility, cultural events, and inclusive representation in communications, will see better engagement. It’s not about ‘inviting everyone’ to the same thing. It’s about supporting equity and making sure everyone feels they belong.
What doesn't work (and why).
The "one-size-fits-all" trap.
A single email invitation to a workshop taking place at 3:00pm on a Tuesday is not inclusive. Neither is a blanket expectation that all parents can support homework in the same way. Strategies must flex. What works for one family won’t work for another, and equity demands we meet parents where they are.
A focus on presence, not partnership.
Counting how many parents show up to a school event is not the same as evaluating engagement. A parent might never attend a meeting, but be deeply involved in their child’s learning at home. Conversely, others may attend every function, but never talk about learning at the dinner table. We need better metrics and better thinking.
Does it differ between primary and secondary?
Straightforwardly, yes, it does.
In the primary years, the relationship between home and school tends to be closer. Children are more open, and routines are more manageable. The best strategies here are simple:
Reading together every day. Encouraging reading for pleasure is so important.
Talking to your child about what they're learning, what they enjoy, and what they don't.
Creating bedtime routines that allow for calm and connection.
Using affirmation cards in the home can spark conversations, build confidence and support wellbeing.
In secondary, the waters get trickier. Adolescents pull away, naturally. But this is where parental engagement really matters.
Keep asking questions, even if the answers are monosyllabic.
Support them with time management, goal setting, and motivation.
Celebrate effort, not just achievement.
And don’t take the eye-rolls personally. They’re listening, even when they say they’re not.
Continue to show you care, even when they say they don't. Make them tea. Take them a biscuit.
Home learning: a tool, not a test.
Also known as 'homework', home learning continues to be widely used, but the jury is still out when it comes to its purpose or usefulness.
Whether you're pro-homework (e.g. Professor Harris Cooper, Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Duke University), anti-homework (e.g. Alfie Kohn, American author and lecturer), or somewhere in the middle (e.g. John Hattie, New Zealand educator and academic), it's a part of school life that pervades the education system.
Homework often brings tension. Some parents feel pressured to “teach” or “correct” rather than support. Others worry they’re not doing enough.
Here’s the key: homework should be a window into what your child is learning, not a measure of your ability to help them.
There is ongoing debate about the value of homework, particularly at primary level. Research from the Education Endowment Foundation (2021), aligning with the views of John Hattie, suggests that while homework in secondary school can have a positive impact (particularly when well-designed and purposeful), the evidence is much weaker in primary. Quality, not quantity, is what matters.
Engaging parents means helping them understand the why behind homework, and giving them permission to take a step back when needed.
Done well, these strategies strengthen trust, build confidence, and place parents exactly where they should be: as partners in learning, not spectators. At &Parents, we believe that when you equip families with clarity, flexibility, and support, engagement flourishes. And so do children.
Navigating barriers and challenges.
If engaging parents were easy, every school would have cracked it by now. But the truth is, even with the best intentions, there are real barriers, often hidden in plain sight, that get in the way. Understanding these barriers is the first step. Removing them is the next.
With over a decade of experience in education and school leadership, and through the lens of my doctoral research into online schooling, I’ve seen the same challenges come up time and again. The difference between schools that build strong partnerships and those that don’t? They don’t only identify these barriers, they respond to them authentically.
The barriers are real... but not insurmountable.
Time is a luxury many parents don't have.
A frustrating falsehood of teachers, in my experience, is the perception that parents and carers who cannot attend school-organised events, don't care. For 99.9999% of the time, this could not be further from the truth. Working parents, carers with multiple jobs, single parents juggling responsibilities. Let's think about it:
The parent-teacher meetings between 4-6pm... Parents working 9-5 are working
Let's move the parent-teacher meetings from 6-8pm... OK, that's after work, but for families with young children, that's bath and bed time.
The solution? Flexibility. Offer asynchronous options. Record events. Share notes. Use WhatsApp, not only email. Let families access support on their terms.
Language and culture matter.
In international and multilingual communities, language isn’t only a communication tool, it’s a barrier or a bridge. If all your communication is in English, full of educational jargon, you’re not being inclusive. You’re being exclusive.
The most successful schools use translation tools, plain English summaries, visuals, and community liaisons. They make sure every family feels like they belong and that they're represented, even when they don’t share the same first language or cultural references.
Past experiences shape current engagement.
For many parents, their own school memories weren’t positive. Some felt unheard, unseen, or unwelcome. These feelings don’t disappear when they become parents. They carry forward, shaping how they interact with their child’s school. This can be particularly prevalent, if the parent, and even grandparent, went to the same school the child is attending.
Schools must lead with empathy. Engagement is relational, not transactional. It’s about humans. It's about building trust slowly, acknowledging the potential for past harm, and showing up differently.
Socioeconomic pressures are real.
Families facing poverty or financial instability may not prioritise the elements of education the school would expect them to, not because they don’t care, but because they’re in survival mode.
The issues facing families are real. This could be getting to and from school events without reliable transport, affording uniforms or school meals, not working all hours to be able to help with homework or be that supportive voice, or even being able to take time off work to attend a meeting. These hidden pressures often go unnoticed by schools, but they significantly shape how, and whether, parents can engage.
Tailored support is key. This might look like loaned devices, flexible deadlines, or drop-in sessions with free childcare. It’s about recognising the context, and responding with dignity.
Reaching the so-called 'unreachable'
There’s a group of parents in every school community that educators call the “hard to reach.” But the truth is, they’re often not hard to reach. There are a couple of alternative perspectives: they’re not being reached well or that the school themselves are hard for parents to reach.
So, what helps?
Flexible formats: virtual meetings, voice notes, home visits where appropriate.
Multilingual materials: translate and simplify.
Trusted messengers: parents respond better to familiar, relatable faces, not only senior leaders who hold all the power.
Importantly, this work cannot be one-off. It has to be part of a wider, consistent commitment, by schools, to equity and inclusion.
When schools get it wrong... and don't realise it.
Sometimes the things we think are ‘good practice’ end up pushing parents away.
Long emails full of educational buzzwords.
Forms that assume a nuclear family structure.
Events that require time off work and a car to get there.
Decision-making groups with no parent representation.
These signals tell parents: this isn’t for you.
That has to change.
At &Parents, we believe that engagement is about connection, not compliance. It’s not about ticking a box, it’s about building a bridge.
Yes, the barriers are real. But so is the opportunity. With the right mindset and strategies, schools can turn engagement from a challenge into a shared success story. Every family matters... and every barrier can be reimagined as a door.
The role of schools and educators.
Parental engagement doesn’t “happen". It’s the product of a school culture, crafted intentionally, modelled by leaders, supported by teachers, and underpinned by thoughtful policy.
From my work in digital education and school communication, as well as my doctoral research into how online schools interact with families, one thing is clear: when schools make engagement a strategic priority, everything else improves. Relationships, outcomes, and trust all follow.
But this kind of culture doesn’t build itself. It requires leadership, investment, and day-to-day commitment from the whole school community.
Leadership sets the tone.
Engagement starts at the top.
School leaders must be the architects of a culture where parental input is welcomed, respected, and acted on. That doesn’t mean agreeing with everything. It means inviting dialogue, not defensiveness.
Leaders can:
Champion parental engagement in strategic plans.
Clearly define the expectations of how teachers should interact with parents.
Allocate time and budget for family partnership initiatives, advice and coaching.
Role-model respectful, inclusive communication.
Celebrate stories of strong home-school collaboration.
These strategies are important in all schools, but in online settings especially, where families might never cross the school threshold, this work is vital. It’s the glue that connects home and school.
Teachers need the tools.
While school leaders shape the culture, teachers carry the weight of parental interactions day-to-day. Yet many teachers report feeling underprepared to communicate with parents, especially across language barriers, cultural differences, or when conversations are difficult.
Professional learning needs to address this head-on. That means training in:
Active listening and empathy in family conversations.
Handling conflict or sensitive issues without judgement.
Communicating clearly, without jargon.
Understanding the home context and how it shapes learning.
Through my experience and research, teachers have spoken about how they’d never been trained in these areas. They were expected to “just know” how to manage parent relationships. There's a lot to be said about inclusion of this area in initial teacher education too. How to navigate parent-school interactions wasn't on the syllabus.
These are obvious gaps. Ones that universities and schools can close.
Policy that enables, not instructs.
Too often, school policies on parental engagement are vague, compliance-driven, or buried deep in handbooks.
Effective policies are:
Clear about expectations and support.
Detail the responsibilities of different roles: teachers, leaders, parents, students.
Flexible to accommodate diverse family structures, needs, and languages.
Co-created with input from parents, not written about them.
For example, a homework policy could outline how families can support without doing the work themselves. A communication policy could define turnaround times, tone of voice, and multilingual options.
At their best, policies are a blueprint for trust. At their worst, they’re a wall.
Trust is the currency.
Absolutely everything in parent-school interactions hinges on trust.
Trust builds when parents see that schools:
Do what they say they’ll do.
Treat their concerns with respect.
See them as partners, not problems.
And trust breaks when parents feel judged, ignored, or left in the dark.
That’s why consistency matters. It’s not about grand gestures. It’s the regular updates, the timely replies, the kindness in tone, remembering a parent’s name, following up, saying 'thank you'.
It's the little things that matter.
Schools that get this right don’t treat parent interactions as a standalone event or a tick-box exercise. They embed these into how they do school. And that changes everything for the whole community.
At &Parents, we work with schools to build this culture, from leadership training to communication audits to policy review. When educators and families truly collaborate, learning doesn’t stop at the school gates... it expands, strengthens, and flourishes.
Evaluating impact and looking ahead.
Parental engagement is powerful, but like anything in education, it needs to be measured, refined, and rooted in evidence. It’s not enough to say “we value our parents” or “we sent the newsletter.” We have to ask: Did it work? Did it matter? Did it help the child learn?
With my background in education, I’ve seen firsthand how vague engagement goals lead to vague results. In contrast, schools that track impact thoughtfully can make a strong case, for resources, for policy support, and most importantly, for sustained improvement. Through my doctoral research, it’s become even clearer that we need smarter ways to evaluate what parental engagement really looks like in practice, and what it really achieves.
How do we measure impact?
Linking engagement to outcomes.
It’s not always a direct line, but we can, and should, track how parent engagement correlates with:
Academic progress
Attendance rates
Student wellbeing indicators
Behaviour records
When engagement is embedded and commonplace in school culture, you often see steady improvements across the board. The Education Endowment Foundation (EEF, 2021) reports that even small-scale parental engagement initiatives can lead to +2 to +3 months’ progress per year, especially in literacy and maths.
Listening to parents themselves.
Numbers matter, but so do voices. Surveys gathering qualitative data, focus groups, and open-ended feedback loops can show:
Whether parents feel included and informed
How confident they are in supporting learning
What barriers they still face
These insights are essential, especially in international and online settings, where parents may feel more removed from school life.
What does success look like?
There’s no single metric, but the signs are there when engagement is working:
Participation: not only in meetings or events, but in conversations, planning, and shared decision-making.
Student progress: not only in grades, but in resilience, motivation, and ownership of learning.
Stronger relationships: between home and school, built on trust, communication, and mutual respect.
In my research and education work, I’ve often found that the best sign of success isn’t data, it’s tone. When parents talk about school, do they say we or they? That small linguistic shift reveals a huge cultural one.
What are we still not talking about enough?
Despite years of advocacy and guidance, originating with the Plowden Report (1967) there are still clear gaps in the research:
Longitudinal studies that follow the impact of engagement over time.
Intersectional analysis that explores how gender, ethnicity, language, and class intersect with engagement practices.
The student voice, particularly how adolescents perceive and experience parental engagement.
These are all areas we need to understand better if we want engagement strategies to be inclusive, meaningful, and effective across diverse communities.
What needs to change?
If there’s one systemic shift I’d advocate for, it’s for schools to stop treating parental engagement as an optional extra. It’s not the cherry on top of a good education, it’s the foundation beneath it.
That means:
Embedding engagement in learning in school improvement plans
Training all staff in family partnership approaches and how to promote engagement.
Funding engagement as a core part of school development, especially in disadvantaged communities.
Redefining success through co-created goals that include the voices of students, families, and teachers.
At &Parents, this is the heart of our work. We help schools not only value parental engagement but to strategise it, evaluate it, and build it into the fabric of school life.
Because when engagement is intentional, inclusive, and evidence-informed, the whole community benefits.
The power of parental engagement.
Parental engagement is not about being an expert in algebra or understanding the IB diploma inside out. It’s about showing up with interest, care, and consistency. It’s about creating a home where learning matters, and where effort is seen, encouraged, and celebrated.
As we’ve explored throughout this article, genuine engagement transforms outcomes. Students do better when their parents are engaged, not only academically, but emotionally and socially. Trust grows. Motivation deepens. Relationships between home and school become stronger, more resilient, and more impactful.
This isn’t solely anecdotal, this is supported by decades of research, global evidence, and the lived experience of families and educators alike. And it is clear in the research of my own doctoral study into international online schooling: engaged parents shape engaged learners.
So here’s the question: What does engagement look like in your school, or your home?
Not what’s written in a policy or on a newsletter. But in practice. In tone. In partnership. In trust.
If we want our schools to thrive, we must stop treating engagement as an afterthought. Engagement should be woven into the very fabric of school culture, from leadership and planning to classroom routines and digital tools.
Let’s stop asking if parents should be involved. Start building schools where they’re seen as essential... because they are.
At &Parents, we help schools and families make that shift. Whether you’re a school leader looking to build a stronger parent strategy, a teacher wanting to connect more meaningfully with families, or a parent wondering how best to support your child—we’re here for it.
We offer expert support, tailored training, and practical resources to turn engagement into impact.
Connect with us at &Parents to find out how we can support your community.
"Every parent matters in learning."
References:
Central Advisory Council for Education (England). (1967). Children and their primary schools: A report of the Central Advisory Council for Education (England) (The Plowden Report). Her Majesty’s Stationery Office.
Education Endowment Foundation. (2021). Working with parents to support children's learning. https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/education-evidence/guidance-reports/supporting-parents
Goodall, J., & Montgomery, C. (2014). Parental involvement to parental engagement: A continuum. Educational Review, 66(4), 399–410. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131911.2013.781576
Jeynes, W. H. (2012). A meta-analysis of the efficacy of different types of parental involvement programs for urban students. Urban Education, 47(4), 706–742. https://doi.org/10.1177/0042085912445643
OECD. (2023). Equity and inclusion in education: Finding strength through diversity. OECD Publishing. https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/equity-and-inclusion-in-education_e9072e21-en.html
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