Parental involvement and family learning
For refugee families, primary schools can be an important pathway to integration into local communities. By actively welcoming refugees and encouraging their involvement, schools can improve their sense of belonging and inclusion.
By involving refugee parents, schools can better support children’s settling in, well-being and progress and can benefit from the talents and skills that parents bring. Family learning opportunities in schools can also provide refugee parents with skills and experiences that can support them in their aspirations towards employment and will therefore contribute towards integration.
Many primary schools seek to engage with refugee parents during the process of children’s admission and induction. They look for ways of encouraging good communication and dialogue, and listen to parents’ needs and concerns. The supporting access and enrolment to school area of this website gives information about this.
There may be reasons why it is difficult for some refugee parents to be actively involved in their child’s education. These may include:
- Being unable to communicate in English
- Being unfamiliar with the education system in England and how children are taught
- Not knowing how to support children’s learning
- Coming from a culture where there is no tradition or expectation of parental involvement in their children’s schooling.
Good practice
By encouraging parental involvement and family learning, schools can support children’s progress and assist the integration of refugee families.
Parental involvement
Ensure that the involvement of refugee parents is planned for as part of the duty to promote race equality. The Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000 requires schools to monitor the involvement of parents from all sections of the community and ensure that no group of parents is under-represented. The Commission for Racial Equality (.pdf) provides guidance to assist schools meet their duties under the Act.
A parental involvement and partnership policy
Schools can improve the involvement of refugee parents by having a clear vision of the partnership with families that they wish to promote.
Parental Involvement This Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) website has been designed to help schools develop parental involvement and offers some suggestions on how to achieve effective partnership with parents.
Working with parents area of the teachernet aims to help practitioners understand how to work with parents effectively and explains why it is important to do so. The content is updated regularly.
Parents: Partners in learning is a guidance pack and video produced by the Primary National Strategy on the important role that parents and families play in their children's learning.
QCA Pathways to learning for new arrivals provides guidance on how schools can plan for better Parental involvement and partnership.
Provide accessible information
Children do better when parents understand more about the learning that takes place in the school and are better able to support learning in the home. Many schools work closely with local minority ethnic communities, including refugees, to ensure that parents become familiar with activities and suggest ways that they can become more involved. Bilingual assistants and volunteers can play an important role in this, as can local Interpreting and translation services.
Schools can also provide parents with information about local English language classes. Some parents may need information about classes with crèche facilities.
Develop effective home-school liaison
Home-school liaison can help maintain contact and effective ongoing communication. Refugee parents and communities may need flexible approaches to home-school liaison.
Parental involvement in multi-ethnic schools This area of the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) Parental Involvement website provides home-school liaison advice.
School-Home Support Some schools in London have deployed school-home support workers from this registered charity to extend help to parents and families where possible. The charity works holistically and its workers are developing their roles to work with newly arrived refugee children, parents and communities.
Involve parents in school
Activities that can involve parents may include class trips, assemblies and celebrations, social events, interpreting and mentoring. Volunteering can increase the confidence of refugee parents and provide them with experience that can help them into employment. Volunteering England and Tandem websites provide guidance. Some refugee community organisations run volunteering and befriending programmes and may be able to support parental involvement initiatives in schools such as the Shpresa Programme for the Albanian-speaking community. Shpresa are working in partnership with a local extended school to increase the involvement of Albanian-speaking parents.
Provide family learning opportunities
Family learning can help refugee parents understand how pupils are taught in school, provide them with access to English classes and also improve parents’ literacy, numeracy and ICT skills. Consulting with and listening to refugee parents can help identify their needs and ensure that what is planned meets their needs. Ofsted’s Family Learning: a survey of current practice (2000) found that broad and flexible family learning opportunities are more successful in attracting parents from disadvantaged and under-represented groups. The QCA Pathways to learning for new arrivals website provides guidance on planning Family learning with parents of new arrivals.
Case study
Family language courses for parents (.PDF)
Lewisham Ethnic Minority Achievement Strategy (EMAS) worked in partnership with the Centre for Literacy in Primary Education (CLPE) to develop a family language course for refugee families and other new arrivals. The case study describes the course and the ways it improved the involvement of parents in their children’s learning.
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