The Four Pillars of Parental Engagement: Empowering schools to connect better with parents and pupils
£16.99*
Pros
- The four pillars framework offers a great resource for schools trying to bridge the home-school divide to support young people.
- Karen and Justin lay the foundations for the pillars, encouraging schools to explore the current position.
- Guiding the reader through steps, ideas, and tips, Justin and Karen offer step-by-step advice on how to deliver your parental engagement plan, encouraging openness.
- The book explores how school leadership teams and staff can deliver on promises, developing a culture where parents are not afraid to approach the school, and vice-versa.
- This book is an essential read for any school, leadership team or teacher who feels that they are struggling to improve engagement with parents.
Supported by Crown House Publishing
For schools, engaging with parents is critical, in the majority of cases, results in better performance from young people (as reported here) ‘A family’s interest in a student’s school life helps the child overcome educational inequality’. Building the connection between school and home is a priority for many educational settings, and positively engaging with parents often comes with its own set of challenges.
In their new book, Justin Robbins and Karen Dempster tackle the challenge of engaging with parents offering four pillars that empower schools to connect better. To be clear here, the authors define ‘parents’ as anyone who has a responsibility to look after school-aged children, including single parents, grandparents, extended family, carers, foster parents and legal guardians. We will all be familiar with families who do not engage at all with schools, or the challenges faced by looked-after children, but what is important is that young people need a network of people around them, who can guide them through the ups and downs of growing up. It is with this in mind that the authors have created a framework based on knowledge, environment, culture and communication encouraging active parental engagement.
The book starts by laying the foundations for the pillars, encouraging schools to explore the current position, offering questions and activities for a self-evaluation. Accompanied by case studies, the book then encourages building a parental engagement plan, and defining your own school’s statement, with a medium-term plan of action to put everything into place.
With the foundations set, the book then proceeds to explore each of the four pillars in more depth. Guiding the reader through steps, ideas, and tips, Justin and Karen offer step-by-step advice on how to deliver your parental engagement plan, encouraging openness. Clear communication is key, and the book explores how school leadership teams and staff can deliver on promises, developing a culture where parents are not afraid to approach the school, and vice-versa. At the end of the day, it’s all about working towards the best interest of the young people in our care, with everyone involved to achieve the best outcomes.
This book is an essential read for any school, leadership team or teacher who feels that they are struggling to improve engagement with parents. The authors encourage the reader to self-evaluate the systems and cultures within the community that could be creating barriers to positive two-way communications between the school and home settings. Using the four pillars as a framework, every school setting will be able to develop a positive parental engagement plan that works on overcoming barriers and encouraging open, honest, and constructive relationships.
Click here to see Justin and Karen’s presentation showcase (#14) at the #UKEdChat 2021 Conference
*RRP – Price correct at time of review publication.
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