Why develop a home school partnership?

When parents and teachers work well together, everyone benefits. Unique insights and different perspectives about the same child or young person can be shared to provide a more complete understanding of the child’s abilities, strengths, interests and challenges.

The teacher knows more about the curriculum and the school culture, while the parent knows more about their child’s personality, tendencies, and family life. A successful parent-teacher partnership also shows the child or young person that an entire team of adults is ‘on their side’. 

Parental involvement can free teachers to focus more on the task of teaching children. By having more contact with parents, teachers learn more about the child or young person’s holistic needs and home environment. Better relationships with the teachers can lead to the parents having a more positive view of the school. An effective and communicative partnership between the school and parents establishes an environment where the child has a sense of security, familiarity and freedom. This enhances learning.

Positive parent-school communications can also benefit parents and ideas can be shared on how to best to support the child learning. How a school or setting communicates and interacts with its parent and carers can affect the extent and quality of parents’ home involvement in their child’s learning. This includes sharing good news about the child or young person, rather than just communicating when something has gone wrong. Effective communication will also remove many misunderstandings and ambiguities about daily life in school.

Parent involvement also benefits the child or young person as this:

• raises their academic achievement
• increased motivation for learning
• improves behaviour
• improves attendance
• creates a more positive attitude about homework and school in general.

Useful websites:

• The Education Endowment Foundation has produced a guidance report ‘Working with Parents to Support Children’s Learning’ which has clear and actionable recommendations for teachers.
• PTA UK has produced guidance ‘How to build effective home-school partnerships’.

Last updated 2 October 2020