What is the value of "parental engagement" ? It is much heralded amongst Senior Leadership, Governors and Departments for Education. Why and how do schools increase parental engagement?
It has been a long held view that in socially advantaged households parental aspiration is obviously communicated to children and ensures that their academic achievement is maximised. Research by the University of Michigan has demonstrated a clear correlation between the involvement of parents and subsequent improvements in student grades and this has been demonstrated even in socially disadvanteged homes.
There is a correspondence with which all teachers are familiar, that where parents felt left out of the education system in their childhood, they frequently communicate this disenchantment to their children. Getting such parents to come into school to attend parent's evening very much brings back reminders of attending school disciplinary meetings rather than the actual objective which is to focus on helping the children.
But getting parents to help student to achieve their potential is obvious if you can interract with parents when their children are young. Firstly, an app allows school to communicate with parents wherein the subject is the child, not the parent's attendance at a school event.
With our new parent tracker functionality in the app control panel, schools can view how many parents have registered and how many of them have viewed messages. We can also allow a csv output of the open rate of messages which can then be ordered by geographic region or other so that schools can see who is reacting to messages and know when a different form of intervention may be required. As the messaging system can include attachments and it is possible to secure areas of the app which can only be seen by either an individual or a class you an provide resources in the app to help with studies