Home-school links

How schools can help parents and families support their children
Parental involvement and homework

How schools can help parents and families support their children

Useful links:

	The Family Reading Campaign is a partnership campaign working to ensure that the importance of encouraging reading in the home is integrated into the planning and activity of all the key organisations concerned with education, health and parenting. The website includes advice for parents and carers on reading with children.
	The Reading Connects family involvement toolkit was written following a cafe-style discussion conference in 2006 which brought together a wide range of experts in engaging parents and other family members with their children's reading. It is designed for primary and secondary schools and provides the tools needed to reach out to families and encourage them to make their homes reading homes.
	Getting the Blokes on Board is a National Literacy Trust magazine aimed at professionals who work with parents. It contains lots of ideas for getting fathers and male carers reading with their children. If you've never worked with dads before, or would just like a few extra ideas, Getting the Blokes on Board is for you.

For information for parents from the DCSF website, visit www.parentcentre.gov.uk

BBC Backpage is made for parents and teachers to share video tips about how they help their kids at primary school with English and maths homework. It's aimed at the seven out of ten parents who say they would help their kids more if they had more confidence about what to do. Website: www.bbc.co.uk/backpage

Supplementary schools, many of which are run by parents and volunteers in ethnic communities, not only help build local communities but involve parents in their children's education. Website: http://www.supplementaryschools.org.uk/site/

School-Home Support is charity which employs people to liase between teachers and parents and try to resolve problems with pupils' behaviour and attendance. Website: www.schoolhomesupport.org

Parent partnership services are statutory services that offer information, advice and support for parents of children and young people with special educational needs (SEN) and school-based issues. To find your local partnership, visit www.parentpartnership.org.uk/

In 2000, the Association of Teachers and Lecturers and the Institute of Public Policy Research published a joint survey: Teachers and Parents: A survey of teachers' views. They found it clear from the extensive comments many teachers made that learning at home should not be merely an extension of 'schooling'. It should be different and distinctive. The scant attention given to home-school issues in initial teacher and in-service training was a key message form the survey. The skills needed for communication with parents were often left out. The researchers found that teachers who did reach out to parents did so in spite of their training - not because of it.

In 2000, Luton Borough Council created a multidisciplinary service, Family Support Through Schools, that could be accessed by families from birth upwards, with the aim of improving parents' capacity to support their children's learning and to forge effective home-school links. An extra 300 preschool places were provided (with bilingual staff where appropriate) and full-time school places offered to all four-year-olds in the September before they reached five. Most important, a family room was created in each school and staffed by a full-time worker. To read about this service and its success in more detail, visit http://education.guardian.co.uk/earlyyears/story/0,,1865467,00.html

In 2007, the Daily Mail covered a 10-year study which found that 'by the age of ten, children are better readers if their parents shunned second-rate nurseries and helped them learn at home instead'. The study found that children who did not attend pre-school but had a good home learning environment made more reading progress than children who had a good home learning environment but went to below-standard nurseries.

Parental involvement and homework

Guidelines on helping pupils with examination coursework are available to parents and teachers following evidence of widespread abuses. The guide is available at www.rewardinglearning.com

Parents worried about whether they know enough to help their children with homework can visit the Parentscentre website (www.parentscentre.gov.uk), hosted by the Department for Children, Schools and Families which has advice on how to tap into the national curriculum and latest learning techniques, as well as offering parents direct links with their children's schools. 

Parentscentre came out of a telephone poll of 1,000 parents which showed 66% disagreed with the proposition that it was schools' responsibility to educate children, not parents' responsibility. This suggested a high level of parental commitment. But 32% of parents agreed with the proposition: "I am worried that when I am helping my child with homework, I may be doing it wrong."

According to a survey carried out in 2006 many parents admit they are baffled by their children's homework and lack the confidence to help out as much as they would like. Nearly one in five parents said they were regularly surprised by the difficulty of the work their children brought home to complete, the survey commissioned by the Department for Education and Skills (now DCSF) found. And nearly seven out of 10 said they would spend more time helping with homework if they were more confident in their own abilities in maths and English. More than nine out of 10 parents agreed that helping their children at home made a difference to their academic achievements at school.

Another study found that the strain on family relationships caused by children's homework often outweighs any educational benefit. Research by the University of London's Institute of Education found that helping pupils with homework "can exacerbate or create family tensions". The study said: "Parents may inhibit their children's effectiveness in doing homework by trying to control the homework environment - telling children when and where to do homework or trying to eliminate distractions - instead of helping them adapt it to suit their learning styles." It concluded that parents and carers can best contribute by offering moral support and only helping when specifically requested to do so. For more information on Homework: the evidence, visit http://ioewebserver.ioe.ac.uk

Most British parents can't understand their children's school work although they spend more than two hours a week trying to help them do it, according to research published in May 2000. The BBC survey showed that 54% of parents feel out of their depth when attempting to help with their homework. The study spoke to 1,200 parents with children aged 10 to 16-years-old.