Supporting the home learning environment

Parental engagement with learning at home is a vital part of young people’s educational journeys. We’ve known this for more than 20 years, but now more than ever we need to support parents to support learning. ‘Parent’ here means any adult with a significant caring responsibility for the young person – it might be a parent, grandparent or other adult. Parental engagement with learning is about parents’ interests in learning – it’s about showing young people that learning is important to all members of the family. Now, with schools closed to the majority of pupils, we all need to work together in partnership to support learning at home. What does the research say? Research has shown the value of parental engagement – it supports better attendance, behaviour and achievement. But it’s important to understand what ‘parental engagement with learning’ actually means. It doesn’t mean coming into school, and it doesn’t necessarily mean checking on homework. Rat