When developing a parental engagement strategy, whether for the whole school, a specific class, or a particular group of children, the key question is, “What do I want to achieve?”
Your goals may involve outcomes related to children’s well-being, development, or learning achievements. Planning for these outcomes and recognising the time, effort, and energy you and your team need to invest to achieve them are essential.
Your strategy should be impactful, creating significant positive changes that resonate with parents and staff. It should be well-researched and grounded in a deep understanding of the needs and aspirations of those it aims to influence. It should incorporate clear goals and measurable outcomes to track its effectiveness over time.
By integrating Mouse Club's innovative approach and resources, your parental engagement strategy will ensure immediate benefits and long-term sustainability. However, whatever initiative you use, encouraging engagement and participation will empower everyone involved to take ownership of the change you are advocating. An impactful strategy should inspire action, create a sense of community, and contribute to meaningful progress.
Consider who will be responsible for delivering support and increasing parental engagement. Not every staff member feels comfortable working with parents; some may require assistance. Parents and families will likely respond more favourably when staff are confident, relaxed, and positive. If a staff member has limited experience, pairing them with a more experienced colleague who has successfully worked with parents can be beneficial. Focus on developing these skills within your team to ensure consistent and effective engagement with parents.
It's really important to find a way to measure how well your efforts are making a difference. After all, if you put time and energy into various initiatives, you'll want to see improvements in parents' engagement in their children's learning. If that doesn't happen, it might feel like your hard work isn't paying off.
Effective communication is essential for establishing positive and productive relationships with families. When we refer to supporting behaviour for learning, we don’t mean that parents should teach the curriculum. Instead, we aim for parents to be engaged in their role and help their children develop essential skills and behaviours for learning.
It's essential to involve your entire class or group in activities. However, some families may require more intensive support due to specific or complex needs. This may relate to care plans, health and education plans, child protection plans, and similar situations. Addressing these needs often requires a different approach, which may involve more intensive assistance and occasionally specialised expertise.
When considering your goals for engaging families through Mouse Club, it’s essential to think about what you want to achieve. You might aim to engage a specific group of parents, help them understand how maths is taught, encourage them to read more regularly with their children, improve children's attainment in phonics, or enhance a parent's confidence and ability in parenting.
Mouse Club boosts staff confidence by offering a framework of training and resources that helps them plan activities and encourage informal interactions that foster trust.
The whole team approach creates a supportive and motivating environment through open discussions, constructive feedback, and sharing success stories. By providing resources, mentorship, and encouraging reflection and evaluation, staff develop the skills and confidence necessary for effective parental engagement, ultimately benefiting children's outcomes.
The Mouse Club training pack contains all the resources you need to measure the project's impact, including PowerPoint presentations for you to share this information with your team. We also advise that you consult the EEF Toolkit, which contains additional evidence and resources that you can use to engage parents in their child’s learning and development.