National charity, ParentKind, aims to help support parents by giving them a voice in education; they’re the largest network of PTA fundraisers based in the UK. In 2020, they conducted a survey amongst parents, quizzing 1,500 about their thoughts and feelings about their eldest child’s school.
The results are interesting and overall positive, with 82% stating their child is happy at school. Most of the stats shared are an improvement on the previous survey results, but only marginally.
In this blog, we’re sharing some insights into the ParentKind survey and offering actionable advice to counteract and improve these results in your school going forward.
86% of parents want to play an active role in their child’s education
Although only down 1% since the previous survey, at first glance, 86% seems pretty good. And it is — it’s certainly one of the higher results in this survey. But what about the other 14% of parents? We all know that parental involvement is key to pupil success. According to Early Learning Software, Waterford, parental involvement doesn’t just directly impact test scores, it helps boost self-esteem, too.
Getting all parents on board and actively communicating with your school has never been easier. With a school communication app, you can reach every parent or carer effortlessly through SMS messages and push notifications straight to their smartphone; whether they’ve downloaded your school app or not.
Further engage parents by re-sending messages to those who’ve yet to respond to messages and survey requests. Start a direct dialogue between parents and their child’s class teacher, all through the app. You need to remove any barriers to effective communication, and a school app helps you do just that.
50% of parents feel they are able to have a say on school decisions that affect their child’s education
This is a statistic on the rise quite considerably from the previous survey. It’s up 9%. But 50% is still pretty low. Your school needs to facilitate easy two-way communication, so parents feel that their voices are heard on important school matters.
Without trusted two-way communication, parents can feel isolated and detached from the school-parent relationship. With a school app, you can send regular surveys to parents which can help you gauge parental sentiment and open a communication channel where parents feel heard and are able to feed back their thoughts and advice on educational processes and decisions.
74% of parents said when their child started school they were given sufficient information and support on how to help them
Another statistic that’s increased since the previous survey by three per cent. Your school should have a resource hub dedicated to sharing important information about your school, and resources to help children learn. You need a site that ensures all mandatory requirements are met without sacrificing design, and a site that’s easy to navigate, particularly for new and prospective parents.
Your school should support parents at every turn, regardless of the enquiry. Over lockdown, in particular, many schools subscribed to homework hubs like ours to help digitise some of their archaic processes — many have made the transition fully from paper-based homework to digital.
Wondering how much a school app could save you? Use our FREE savings calculator and find out now.