Supporting parents to engage with their children's education
Parents are an important influence on children’s aspirations and how they see the world, including their attitudes and approaches to education. In fact, much research has pointed to the link between parent engagement and student outcomes.
We take a look at parent engagement and how schools and communities can support families to improve their children’s education and career journey.
What is parent engagement?
The federal government defines parent engagement as ‘being positively involved and active in your child’s learning’, stressing that parents’ attitudes, values and behaviours can positively influence children’s education outcomes.
‘Parent engagement is more than being involved and informed about school activities. It is actively engaging with your child’s learning, both in the home and at school.’
Parent engagement is important because it leads to better education outcomes, enhanced engagement with schoolwork, more regular school attendance, better behaviour and increased social skills — among countless other improvement indicators.
Globally, research has found that students benefit greatly when parents are actively involved in their learning.
Why should we support engagement in the home?
In a recent article for The Age Smith Family CEO Wendy Field notes that parent engagement is a responsibility to be shared by families, schools and communities, pushing the importance of guiding and supporting engagement at home. She also acknowledges the need to provide guidance to teachers and advisers, many of whom report feeling ill-equipped to engage parents and effectively facilitate the school–home relationship.
Field adds that parents who are unable to engage in their children’s education — whether through lack of encouragement, inability to provide resources or due to negative experiences of schooling — are unknowingly risking their education outcomes. Students not receiving support at home may not be motivated to continue with their schooling or fully engage with career opportunities, particularly in vulnerable communities.
What steps are being taken to improve parent engagement?
Parents, families and carers are a child’s first and most important teachers. This makes parent engagement a key pillar of the federal government’s StudentsFirst strategy, joined by teacher quality, school autonomy and strengthening the curriculum.
The StudentsFirst strategy stresses the need for parents to actively engage with their child’s schooling, suggesting that they:
- have high but achievable expectations
- talk regularly about school and the value of learning
- encourage positive attitudes and respect for school and teachers
- model the behaviours they would like to see in their child.
Another initiative taken by the federal government is the development of the Learning Potential portal and mobile application. Learning Potential has been designed to help parents become more involved in their children’s schooling ‘from the highchair to high school’. It provides useful information, tips and strategies to help parents strengthen the learning experience at home.
The federal government is also committed to improving parent engagement with the school curriculum. The latest review of the Australian Curriculum recommended that education authorities provide new tools to help parents understand what their child is learning at school, such as ‘plain English’ information on curriculum websites. The Australian Government is continuing to work with the states and territories to implement these recommendations.
Meanwhile, the Home Interaction Program for Parents and Youngers (HIPPY), is aimed at building the skills and confidence of parents and carers in disadvantaged communities. The two-year home-based program was expanded in the 2014–15 budget and now operates in 100 locations across Australia.
On the research front, the Australian Research Alliance for Children and Youth (ARACY) is undertaking research to support improved parent engagement, having been allocated $4 million over four years (2014–15 and 2017–18) in the previous budget. This project is seeking to identify how the federal government can best help parents to engage with their children’s learning, and will act as a research and evidence base to build policy and improve education outcomes for all Australian students.