School and home together for learning
Three sessions to support schools in developing stronger partnerships for learning, with parents.
Please note that where ‘parents’ are referenced in this website, this refers to anyone with parental or caring responsibility for a school-age child.
The big question
How can schools and teachers help parents to support learning
regardless of whether pupils are attending school in normal circumstances or not?
Learning Objectives
to evaluate the effectiveness of strategies used to support home learning from March - June 2020;
to provide strategies to improve home-school communications;
to learn from the wider experience of teachers in NI and beyond to improve the experience of home learning;
to identify ways to make effective home learning sustainable for teachers, parents and pupils and
to understand and address the main barriers for parents to engage fully with their child’s schooling.
This course is organised across three sessions, which will all take around 1 hour to work through. In addition to this time, you may need additional time to complete the activities, should these be useful to your school context. These activities could be part of your action plan for Restart, or your School Development Plan.
Why focus on improving home-school partnership?
Effective home-school partnership has been shown to be one of the most powerful tools for schools to use to improve educational outcomes and experiences for their learners.
John Hattie’s Visible Learning: A synthesis of over 800 Meta-analyses relating to achievement (2008) found that “the effect of parental engagement over a student’s career is equivalent to adding two or three years to that student’s education.”
Sylva et al (2004) found that “for all children, the quality of the home learning environment is more important for intellectual and social development than parental occupation, education or income…What parents do is more important than who parents are.”
Schools have just come out of the most extraordinary term many of us will ever have witnessed. We are starting out on a new school year which may well be unlike any we have ever experienced. In that context, in the world of new blended/ hybrid learning methods, we are putting the focus on parents who have carried the responsibility of guiding the learning for the last term.
This module is intended to help teachers and school leaders evaluate their experiences with pupils learning at home and those of their wider school community so that we can all build on the lessons that have been learned and expand on the potential for a more flexible way of working.
Introduction to the module
Each of the four parts of this module are supported by an narrated powerpoint and accompanying documents.
Intro Home school partnership slides 1-3 .mp4This learning journal is available to support your ongoing reflections through this module and help you to plan your next steps.
Audit on parental involvement.docx
A note about how this site was constructed
Images sourced at: https://www.uihere.com/free-cliparts/student-school-parent-teacher-conference-clip-art-teacher-communication-cliparts-1046490Some images in individual documents purchased from Adobe.