This page has been locked and the contents passed to the Scottish Government for analysis. Thank you for all your contributions.
Objective 4: Deepen parental engagement
Update: The Cabinet Secretary has expanded on this objective and set the context in a post on Engage for Education.
Benefits: an increase in the amount of communication between schools and homes, relating to learners achievements; increased involvement of parents in their child’s learning through greater access to opportunities; increased digital literacy amongst parents.
What do we need to do:
- Encourage schools to take small steps – email communications, publish calendars online, develop school websites.
- Provide online learning opportunities for parents (particularly Internet safety).
- Encourage the social use of technology – sharing pupil work and achievements on Facebook / Twitter / Flickr / YouTube / Google+ etc.
- ????
How will we do this:
- For primary and early years secondary where schools have clear duty of care this could be major hurdle without some national or local authority infrastructure - even a lot suggested cloud platforms are cautious about age of their users
- Need models of good practice to encourage schools to open up to parents ( this is actually more than simply a technological issue is fundamentally a service/relationship confidence issue ) .
- All schools should be encouraged to signpost parents and carers towards existing local and national services. This should include Engage for Education, National Parents Forum and Local Groups / Parent Councils. A widget should be developed for Glow-based school websites.
- Rather than re-invent the wheel we should embrace and endorse existing on-line communities of practice for parents such as Mumsnet (the leading UK website for parents by parents).
- Through simple non-complicated case studies Scottish Government / Education Scotland should exemplify how technology can be used to develop better communication with parents. Examples of this might include use of school websites, perhaps with email subscriptions; use of translation software and emerging approaches to reporting.
- Scottish Government / Education Scotland and Local Authorities should make a conscious effort to improve their use of technology, especially social media, to send out key messages to parents and carers (e.g. through targeted Facebook advertising rather than sending out postcards or posters indiscriminately)
- Mechanisms to develop formal parental and community learning should also be developed. The cross cutting themes of Curriculum for Excellence would be a good place to start with this (e.g. Literacy, Numeracy and Health and Well-Being).
- All parents and carers should have access to resources to help them with the issues surrounding Internet Safety and Responsible Use. as well as with developing the competences to help learners benefit from the use of computers1.
Reference:
1. Educational Research and Innovation: Are the New Millennium Learners Making the Grade? : Technology Use and Educational Performance in PISA 2006, http://www.oecd.org/document/57/0,3746,en_2649_35845581_45000313_1_1_1_1,00.html