How parents want to communicate with schools

New government research shows that parents want ever more involvement in their children’s education – and prefer informal chats with school staff instead of parents evenings.

The research shows half of all parents feel very involved their child’s education - up from just 29 per cent in 2001 - and the majority (65 per cent) want to get even more involved. Parents now see informal discussions with school staff as the most useful way of finding out about a child’s progress.

Since 2001 the proportion of parents who see parents evening as the “most useful” way of communicating has dropped from 43 per cent to 19 per cent. Key findings in the Parental Involvement in Children’s Education survey are that:

• Around half (51 per cent) of parents feel ‘very involved’ in their child’s school life, a noticeable increase from 29 per cent in 2001, and 38 per cent in 2004. In common with previous years, work commitments were perceived as the main barrier to further involvement.

• There has been a moderate shift in parents’ attitudes away from a child’s education being the school’s responsibility, towards it being more equal or mainly or wholly a parent’s responsibility.

• Three in four parents (73 per cent) say it is ‘extremely important’ to help with homework, and this has hardly changed since 2001.

• Parents were generally very positive towards information provided by the school such as information provided about their child’s progress (86 per cent said their child’s school provided clear information on this) and the school being welcoming to parents, (92 per cent said it was).

• Parent’s see communicating with schools through ‘informal discussions with school staff’ as the most useful way of finding out about a child’s progress. This follows a noticeable decline since 2001 in the number who said Parents Evenings are the most useful method (from 43 per cent in 2001 to 19 per cent in 2007).

• The survey findings show many sub-group differences, but some of the strongest impacts and most consistent differences have been found in respect of parents of children identified as having Special Educational Needs (SEN).

 The Parental Involvement in Children’s Education (PICE) 2007 survey involved a telephone survey of 5,032 randomly selected parents of children attending state schools. Similar surveys have been carried out in 2001 and 2004. This year absent parents were included for the first time.

 It is available at:
http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/research/data/uploadfiles/DCSF-RR034.pdf

Tony Attwood

This entry was posted on 09/05/2008 at 10:29 am and is filed under Recent posts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.