Parental involvement and family learning

For refugee families, secondary schools can be an important pathway to integration into local communities. By actively welcoming refugees and encouraging their involvement, schools can improve refugees’ sense of belonging and their inclusion in the community.

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 secondary schools seek to engage with refugee parents during the process of pupil 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 pupils are taught
Not knowing how to support pupils’ 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 Equality and Human Rights Commission (PDF) provides guidance to assist schools meet their duties under the Act.

A policy for 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. For guidance see:

Parental Involvement This 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.

QCA Pathways to learning for new arrivals website provides guidance on how schools can plan for better Parental involvement and partnership.

Provide accessible information to refugee families and communities

Children and young people 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.

A new multi-language London Challenge Accessibility DVD can be viewed on the parentscentre website. It explains the English secondary school system and the role parents can play in supporting their children. The DVD has had input from London's African and African-Caribbean, Bangladeshi, Somali, Pakistani, Turkish, Turkish-Kurdish, and Turkish Cypriot communities. The DVD deals with common issues, ranging from how to understand the language of school reports, to how the English school system differs from school systems in other parts of the world. The dowbloadable DVD and accompanying fact sheets, in English, Sylheti, Somali, Urdu and Turkish, explain about homework and how parents can help their children learn.

Further information about how parents can support children’s learning is in the promoting the participation of refugee parents area of this website.

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 DCSF 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. Some refugee community organisations run volunteering and befriending programmes and may be able to support parental involvement initiatives in schools. For guidance see:

Volunteering England offers a range of resources for anyone who works with or manages volunteers as well as to those who want to volunteer.

Tandem runs The Volunteering and Asylum Project which works to promote good practice in volunteering and encourage volunteering initiatives that involve refugees and others.

Shpresa Programme is for the Albanian-speaking community. Shpresa is 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 access for them 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 these. Ofsted’s Family Learning: a survey of current practice (2000) (PDF) 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 studies

Out-of-school-hours learning for refugee students (.PDF)

Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Language College, in the London Borough of Islington, has developed out-of-school-hours activities to support Turkish, Kurdish and Somali pupils. This case study shows how the school has provided bilingual revision classes, a Somali social club and parental involvement activity that have delivered real benefits for refugee pupils and their families.

Parental involvement and extended school learning activities (.PDF)

Northumberland Park Community School in the London Borough of Haringey serves an area of considerable deprivation where over 85% of the pupils are from minority ethnic communities. Family language courses and additional support have been tailored to the needs of refugee families and other minority ethnic parents. The case study describes the courses and how the increased involvement of parents has supported children’s learning.

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