Parental engagement approaches in schools should aim to encourage positive learning interactions between parents and their children.
The evidence for this strand focuses on academic attainment, but teachers also work in partnership with parents to support pupils’ attendance, behaviour and wellbeing.
Within the evidence base, common parental engagement approaches include:
- providing families with ideas, activities, materials or resources to enrich the home learning environment;
- teaching families strategies or techniques to support pupils’ learning or wider development;
- communicating with families about pupils’ learning in positive, personalised ways.
Parental engagement approaches that are less common within the evidence base include:
- activities that aim to strengthen connections between home and school, such as celebration events;
- approaches and programmes which aim to develop parents’ skills in areas such as literacy or IT skills;
- more intensive support to meet the wider needs of families in crisis.
Parental engagement approaches are underpinned by strong, mutually respectful relationships between parents and teachers.
| Approach: | Examples: |
| Providing activities or resources to enrich the home learning environment. | Sharing books accompanied by discussion prompts to encourage rich conversations. Sharing ideas to reinforce key learning through families’ day-to-day routines (e.g., writing shopping lists together or spotting shapes on the way to school). Signposting to free resources connected to what pupils are learning in school (e.g., books, films, games, local exhibitions). |
| Teaching families strategies to support pupils’ learning. | Modelling specific phonics strategies for parents via videos or workshops. Modelling positive learning interactions during home visits or ‘stay and play sessions’ with young children. Training parents to deliver a specific, targeted intervention. |
| Communicating with families about pupils’ learning. | Sending positive, personalised messages focused on successes and next steps (e.g., about attendance, revision or home reading). Engaging in two-way conversations to learn from families about pupils’ strengths, difficulties and interests. Proactively building relationships with families, including gathering their feedback and involving them in planning and decision-making. |
1. Parental engagement has a positive impact on average of 4 months’ additional progress. Most evidence relates to the effect of home-reading interventions on literacy outcomes. There is some promising evidence of similar impact for maths outcomes, but the evidence base is smaller.
2. It is crucial to consider how to engage with all parents to avoid widening attainment gaps. This is likely to require understanding of families’ individual contexts and careful consideration of how barriers can be removed.
3. The key mechanism for parental engagement is improving the quality and quantity of learning that takes place in the home learning environment. Consider what support you can give to parents to ensure home learning is of high quality. For example, providing practical strategies with tips, support, and resources may be more beneficial than simply gifting a book to pupils or asking parents to provide generic help.
4. There is some evidence that personalised messages linked to learning can promote positive parent-child interactions. Consider how to tailor school communications to encourage positive dialogue about learning.
5. There is strong evidence supporting parental engagement approaches with younger children, but far less research in secondary schools. It is important to consider how you will maintain and adapt parental engagement as children get older.
The average impact of the parental engagement approaches is about an additional four months’ progress over the course of a year.
The evidence about how to improve attainment by increasing parental engagement is mixed. Most of the evidence focuses on home-reading interventions and other approaches that aim to facilitate parental engagement with learning at home.
An EEF programme which aimed to prompt greater parental engagement with their children’s learning through text message alerts delivered a small positive impact at very low cost. However, the EEF has also tested a number of interventions designed to improve pupils’ outcomes by engaging parents in different types of skills development (e.g., academic skills or parenting skills). The consistent message from these is that engaging parents in skills programmes is difficult. This suggests that developing effective parental engagement is challenging and needs careful planning, monitoring and evaluation.
There is some evidence that supporting parents with their first child will have benefits for siblings.
Parents’ aspirations for their children also appear to be important for pupil outcomes, although there is limited evidence to show that intervening to change parents’ aspirations will raise their children’s aspirations and achievement over the longer term.
Effects are similar across early years settings and primary schools (+4 months). Parental engagement approaches also appear to have a positive impact in secondary schools, but more evidence is needed before we can be confident about this.
Overall, effects are similar for literacy and for mathematics outcomes (+4 months). However, there is less evidence for maths so we are less confident in this finding.
Approaches where a parent works directly with their child one-to-one typically show greatest impact.
Parental engagement approaches have been evaluated in many countries around the world, including in the UK.
It is important that schools understand and consider families’ individual circumstances when planning for parental engagement. For example, not all pupils have access to an appropriate space for home learning, or to the same range of resources or learning activities outside of school. Parents also have differing levels of confidence around supporting their children’s learning.
This might partially explain why – on average – attainment levels regress more for disadvantaged pupils during the summer holidays compared to their non-disadvantaged peers. By designing and delivering effective support that is sensitive to families’ individual circumstances, schools and teachers may be able to mitigate this risk. For example, schools could consider initiatives to encourage summer reading, as these have some evidence of promise but are not widely used at present.
Parental engagement strategies risk increasing attainment gaps if the families that access parental engagement opportunities are primarily from affluent backgrounds. It is therefore crucial to consider how parental engagement strategies will support all parents. For example, by:
- reflecting on the time, resources, background knowledge and confidence required, and considering how any barriers can be mitigated;
- avoiding negative judgements and assumptions and ensuring that approaches identify and build on families’ existing strengths;
- building parents’ self-efficacy by ensuring that they are equal partners and that parents know they can make a difference to their children’s outcomes.
Interventions designed to engage parents in homework are not generally linked to increased attainment. While encouraging parents to become directly involved in homework might appear attractive, schools should consider whether parents have the necessary knowledge and skills, particularly at secondary level. Pupils who are struggling academically may be more likely to request parental assistance with homework, but parents may be unfamiliar with the most effective teaching methods. As a consequence, it may be more effective to encourage parents to redirect a struggling pupil to their teachers rather than to take on an instructional role.
Parents can also support their children by encouraging them to set goals, plan, and manage their time, effort, and emotions (see Metacognition and self-regulationHow children monitor their emotions and thoughts, and adapt their behaviour in different circumstances.). This type of support can help children to regulate their own learning and will often be more valuable than direct help with homework tasks.
The key mechanism for parental engagement strategies is improving the quality and quantity of learning that takes place in the home learning environment. This is very challenging to implement in practice.
Some key elements schools might choose to implement include:
- Providing families with ideas, activities or resources to enrich the home learning environment, alongside modelling strategies or techniques to support positive parent-child learning interactions. For example, encouraging frequent shared reading and providing prompts that encourage longer, richer conversations.
- Tailoring communications to encourage positive dialogue about learning. For example, sending personalised updates that are linked to learning and likely to promote positive interactions, such as celebrating success and sharing goals.
- Regularly reviewing how well the school is working with all parents and identifying areas for improvement. For example, ensuring two-way communication and proactively listening to families that may appear to be less engaged.
- Offering more sustained and intensive support where needed. For example, making home visits, offering practical support, or implementing specific targeted programmes.
Implementing parental engagement strategies requires careful consideration of potential barriers. For example:
- Is there provision for working parents through flexible timings, formats or locations?
- Will all parents feel confident supporting the activity?
- Will parents understand why this matters and how they can make a difference?
- Do any families need additional support to be able to participate?
Parental engagement approaches are typically delivered over an extended period (around 18 weeks), as building effective relationships between school and parents requires a sustained effort. Hence it is important to ensure that staff workload and wellbeing are considered.
Staff training is likely to be an important part of effective implementation because most teachers in England say they have had no parental engagement training.
When introducing new approaches, schools should consider implementation. For more information see A School’s Guide to Implementation.
Overall, the median costs of implementing parental engagement are estimated as very low. Most costs arise from staff training and development, all of which are more likely to be start-up costs.
Whilst the median cost estimate for parental engagement is very low, the option to include additional ongoing staff training, materials and resources, and additional staff time means that costs can range from very low to moderate.
These cost estimates assume that schools are already paying for technology for communication with parents, and facilities to host any in person meetings. These are all pre-requisite costs of implementing parental engagement strategies, without which the cost is likely to be higher.
The security of the evidence around parental engagement is rated as high. 124 studies were identified. The topic lost a padlock because a large percentage of the studies were not independently evaluated. Evaluations conducted by organisations connected with the approach – for example, commercial providers, typically have larger impacts, which may influence the overall impact of the strand.
As with any evidence review, the Toolkit summarises the average impact of approaches when researched in academic studies. It is important to consider your context and apply your professional judgement when implementing an approach in your setting.
Have any questions?
The Teaching and Learning Toolkit is a living resource that is updated as new evidence is published. As we continue to update the Toolkit we are interested in your questions about this topic area for future content.
The evidence synthesis team will review submitted questions and, where possible, provide answers in future updates.
Guidance Reports
Working with Parents to Support Children’s Learning
Guidance Reports