A Holistic Approach to
Tackle Learning Disadvantage
through School - Family
Collaboration
The whole-school approach
One of the basic reasons involves the role of the family. According to much research, the most accurate predictor of academic achievement is the extent to which families encourage learning at home and involve themselves in their child’s education. However, parents and families of disadvantaged students cannot help them with their homework, possibly due to their own schooling experiences or their lack of basic skills; they often have negative attitudes towards education; they do not participate in school meetings. This type of behaviour clearly affects the educational process of their children, often resulting in low grades, absenteeism, and finally early school leaving. On the other hand, another important factor related to early school leaving involves the role of schools.
Schools are not always an open environment that welcomes disadvantaged students and their parents. Teachers and school leaders often fail to approach and involve parents in the educational process of their children, especially when these individuals seem to be “not very interested”. One of the major reasons to attribute this is that they have not received the relevant training to include disadvantaged students in their classes and disadvantaged parents in the school practices.
The approach which has repeatedly been proved as effective in tackling early school leaving is the collaborative whole-school approach, which, by cultivating a culture of support and collaboration between families and school staff, can strengthen young people’s identification with the school system, and increase their motivation to learn.
This approach secures the active involvement of the entire school community (school leaders, teaching and non-teaching staff, learners, parents and families). In order for this approach to succeed, schools should lead all efforts targeted at both parents/ families and the school community/ teachers. The development and implementation of this approach is the motivation for this project.
Innovative aspects of the project
Tackling Early School Leaving by Empowering Parents
Even though the role of the parents in the educational inclusion and success of students has been recognized, only few initiatives have effectively used parents to promote the educational inclusion of disadvantaged learners. The proposed project aims at breaking the vicious circle of inter-generational disadvantage by supporting and empowering parents to become equal partners in the educational pathway of their children. Their involvement is decisive for the combat of early school leaving.
Teacher Training on Parental Engagement
Even though such training has been established in many parts of the U.S.A., Canada and Australia, European educational systems do not adequately prepare teachers to undertake actions to actively involve parents in their work. Different studies have pointed out that pre-service training opportunities for teachers rarely focus on the knowledge and skills they need in order to approach and communicate with parents, especially parents with disadvantaged backgrounds. The proposed project aims to provide teachers with the resources to develop skills for the effective engagement of parents.
Parent Education by School Teachers
School staff can build parents’ decision-making, and parenting skills to support the development of positive attitudes and help build a healthy home and school environment. However, very few initiatives cater for the education of parents on issues related to their effective engagement in school activities. The project foresees the pilot implementation of the School + Family Alliance Workshops, targeted at parents so as to become partners in their children’s educational pathway. Moreover, the fact that the parents will be trained by school teachers will alleviate any negative parental attitudes on the school environment by providing the opportunity to form better and more collaborative relationships with the school staff.
Strategy: Guidelines and Action Plans
The objective of this output is the development of an analytic prescription on how schools can develop and implement a comprehensive school wide reform that aims to actively involve parents in the educational pathway of their children. The Strategy will be the first preparatory step for the transformation of schools to welcoming and inclusive environments which celebrate diversity and support each student against early leaving from education, which is the general objective of the project.
According to much research, the most accurate predictor of academic achievement and student success is the extent to which families encourage learning at home and involve themselves in their child’s education. However, parental involvement does not happen on its own. It is the role of each school to approach, develop communication channels and involve parents in its operation. Schools and especially teachers are those who need to make the efforts to build strong foundations for school- parent communication and engage parents in the school reality as much and as effectively as possible.
Educational Support
The main objective of this work package is to provide the means, in terms of educational resources, to facilitate the building of a strong and positive school- family relationship for the support of the educational inclusion of all students, especially the disadvantaged ones. The building of this relationship heavily depends on the knowledge and skills of teachers and parents: teachers need to develop skills and competences in order to engage parents more in the schooling experiences of their children while parents need to develop specific soft skills in order to effectively communicate with school staff and engage more in their children’s education. When both groups’ educational needs have been met, then they can achieve the desired level of cooperation which is essential for the support of disadvantaged students and their remaining in the school system.
The results of this work package aim to address the existing barriers which account for lack of efficient school – parent cooperation, which in turn is among the central causes of early school leaving, especially among disadvantaged students. The barriers include parents’ low skills to interact and communicate with the school as well as their negative attitudes towards schools and teachers and also teachers’ low skills to effectively engage parents in their work, as full partners. The results of this work package involve the development of training curricula and educational materials to be implemented for the training interventions for parents and teachers, at a later stage of the project.
Paradigm
The aim of the School +Family Alliance Paradigm is the development of a comprehensive approach for the successful future transfer of the project experience to other schools throughout Europe. The elaboration of this School+Family Alliance Paradigm will be an effort to “mainstream” the project intervention and to institutionalize permanently the proposed parental engagement and support methodologies in the European education systems. The aim of the Paradigm is to provide a framework of principles illustrated with good practice, so that policy makers, education stakeholders, and relevant NGOs can make the most of the ways parents can contribute to students’ educational inclusion and success- a factor which is often underestimated. It is envisioned that the principles and examples highlighted in this Paradigm will be indispensable in laying the right foundations in other schools across Europe.
The main result of this work package which is divided in a piloting phase and a concluding phase, is the School +Family Alliance Paradigm which constitutes a combination of all the findings that emerged throughout the project regarding the creation and the implementation of a comprehensive methodology to involve and engage parents in the schooling experience of their children as a tool for their successful educational inclusion and for combating the prospect of them dropping out of school. It will also offer inputs on how to transfer the approach and successfully integrate it in a range of other schools. Both the theoretical and the practical components for the development and implementation of the project approach will also be included in the Paradigm.
The Project
The main objective of the School + Family Alliance project is development of a solid methodology to engage the parents of disadvantaged students in the education of their children, through the implementation of an inclusive education approach. Parental engagement is determinant for the educational inclusion and success of their children and an undoubted tool to combat early school leaving. It is the role of the school to engage parents in all levels of operation (everyday work, decision making, curriculum development, etc), that is why an inclusive approach is needed for their effective and sustainable engagement. The proposed project approach consists of certain guidelines for the inclusion of disadvantaged students and their parents and aims to achieve the active involvement of parents, the upskilling of educational staff so as to involve parents more and the creation of an inclusive school environment.
At the same time, the project aims to a significant shift from the context where the cooperation between families and schools remained a wishful thinking to a new context where the responsibility for the support of disadvantaged students is shared across the whole school community, especially students’ families. This project is expected to equip the schools with all the necessary methodologies to accomplish this shift, by achieving the following results:
[1]. The development of a comprehensive model for school education – The School +Family Alliance Strategy. EU (2019) points out that a whole school approach to reducing early school leaving should be promoted across all those dimensions of school life which may have an impact on educational achievement- parents being on thetop of the list. The Strategy, “translated” into individual School + Family Alliance Action Plans for Schools, is a comprehensive step-by-step strategy that incorporates all the elements that are required for the successful conversion of the ordinary school into an inclusive one through active parental involvement.
[2]. The development of training interventions targeted at parents and teachers, as follows:
(a). Parents whose disadvantage poses limitations to their engagement in the school life of their children will participate in the School +Family Alliance Workshops, where they will be trained on the ways to better interact with the school environment of their children and to effectively engage in their educational process
(b). School teachers will participate in the School +Family Alliance Seminars where they will trained on the best ways to approach, interact and finally engage parents, especially the disadvantaged ones, in the support of their students, thus encouraging the development of a whole school ethos. The School +Family Alliance objectives and results aim at tackling early school leaving, thus contributing to the educational and subsequently social- inclusion of all students, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds.