In it for the long haul: Building trusting relationships with parents

Jean Gross, independent consultant and author, UK  Nicola Noble, co-headteacher, Surrey Square Primary School, UK; Trustee, Magic Breakfast, UK Liz Robinson, Co-Director, Big Education, UK; Trustee, National Literacy Trust, UK A large body of research (Castro et al., 2015) has found substantial associations between students’ attainment and the extent of their parents’ engagement with their learning. John Hattie (2008), for example, estimates that the effect of parental engagement is equivalent to two to three additional years of learning over a pupil’s school career.  Yet surveys find that strategies to increase parental engagement are far from universal. While nine out of 10 school leaders see a lack of parental engagement as a barrier to improving disadvantaged pupils’ performance (National Audit Office, 2015), far fewer – just over half – say that they have interventions in place to address this.  Why the gap between concern and action? There are two pro