Parental involvement is important for student success. Two schools conducted audits of parental engagement using the free Parental Engagement Quality Standard toolkit to evaluate practices. Effective use of student data can foster partnerships by providing the right information to parents through portals and social media to support learning at home. Schools are shifting focus to changing learning in the home and engaging parents as co-learners through tools like FROG and treating parents as a valuable, unpaid workforce.

1. Parent Involvement The benefit of harnessing an unpaid workforce Dominic Tester Costello Technology College Iain Williams Bradley Stoke Community School

3. 1030 students

4. An improving school with many good features (OfSTED 2008)

5. Strong vision and leadership

6. Culture of innovation and transformational change

7. Well developed E-Strategy

8. Large investment in ICT infrastructure

9. Supportive CPD programme for staff

10. Won SSAT ICT Register Secondary Showcase Award 2010 for our parent portal

12. Community school – a key driver

13. Oldest students now in Y12

14. Judged as outstanding by OfSTED in 2009

15. Culture of innovation

16. SSAT Consultant School

17. PEQS Gold Award – first school nationally

18. ‘Young’ staff

19. Ethos crucial and often commented upon

20. Stakeholder voice central to development

21. Inclusive: low exclusions, high attendance

22. Comprehensive intake – full age and ability

25. You need to register on the SSAT website

26. Excellent online (and free) toolkit to work through in school

27. Pulls together all of your best practice

28. Provides useful action planning tool and is useful for SEF/Ofsted Section A4.4 - The effectiveness of the school’s engagement with parents and carers

30. Parental Engagement and Learning (vital for learning in the home)

31. Information, Communication & Dialogue

32. Each strand has benchmark statements within it

34. How logical is our reporting?

35. What general information do we provide about the school?

36. What information do we provide for parents about their children?

37. What mechanisms for information exchange are in place?

39. Auditing Parental Engagement PEQS – selecting an area

40. Auditing Parental Engagement PEQS – choosing a category

41. Auditing Parental Engagement PEQS - uploading evidence

42. Auditing Parental Engagement PEQS – summarising evidence

44. positive learning opportunities between children and parents

45. change the dialogue at parent evenings to an AfL focus

46. improved attendance

48. Attendance data

50. Crucial that MIS is set up correctly

51. Graphing requires historical data rather than different ‘aspects’ being used

52. Only sync reporting data when we want to publish new data

53. Keep it simple

55. Cleansing data is essential

56. Don’t share specifics – some things are best kept for 1:1 discussion

57. Routine checks (as a parent) are worthwhile!

58. Keep it simple

60. Cleansing data is essential

61. Watch out for missing registers!

62. Routine checks (as a parent) are worthwhile!

63. Keep it simple

65. Fostering Partnerships Using Social Media

67. Remove barriers and make more accessible

68. Provide opportunities for lower level ‘buy-in’

69. Promote +ve relationships by celebrating work and achievements

70. Use technologies to create ‘on-demand’ parental resources for their child

71. Signpost events and services; promote activities

72. Remove reliance on parents logging in  push technologies

73. Create online communities

74. Facilitate parents engaging with each other

75. Access the PTA

77. Fostering Partnerships Create a specific school email account to link to YouTube / Google Account Register new account with YouTube – think about your channel name Set up your YouTube channel as a ‘reporter’ Make sure that comment moderation is on Start delivering content

78. Fostering Partnerships Create a specific school email account to link to Facebook Create new Facebook account and create page Set up page – adjust permissions Add additional admins Start delivering content

79. Fostering Partnerships Launching FROG with Parents Review and amend your AUP Cleanse your MIS data and decide what’s comfortable (or safe) to share Decide how you’re going to allocate /process usernames and passwords Involve parents in the specification, design and operation Launch with one year group at a time (KS3 first?)

80. Changing Learning in the Home Warwick University 80% of factors affecting children happen in the home, only 20% in school SO… Why do schools put 100% effort into addressing 20% of the problem?

81. Changing Learning in the Home A Subtle Shift Involving parents Engaging parents Focus on the ‘Learning Agenda’

82. Changing Learning in the Home 1 FROG Focus – IL aspiration Homework 2 4 Developing independence in students Parents supporting learning Learning at the centre 3 Parents as co-learners

84. IL pilot (1 year) using FROG is one of five Innovations groups

85. Representation from all subject teams

86. Focused on the pedagogy and practice first before using FROG

87. Gradually introduced FROG to test how well it works

89. Useful Resources General resources http://www.nextgenerationlearning.org.uk/ohnothingmuch/Executive-Summary/ http://schools.becta.org.uk/index.php?section=oe&catcode=ss_es_fam_02 http://www.specialistschools.org.uk/article.aspa?PageId=1320 http://www.ict-register.net/pe.php Engaging Parents in Raising Achievement: Do Parents Know They Matter? Exploiting ICT to improve parental engagement, moving towards online reporting: An introduction for schools Exploiting ICT to improve parental engagement, moving towards online reporting: Framework guide http://www.yudu.com – fantastic online publishing for your school from only £99 p/a http://www.eventelephant.com/ - Great way of managing schools events, whether they be free or paid activities http://www.iamlearning.co.uk – excellent games based learning/revision for students IainWilliams – Bradley Stoke Community School  iain.williams@bradleystokecs.org.uk Dominic Tester – Costello Technology College  d.tester@costello.hants.sch.uk