The relationship between parents and schools is currently under significant strain. Parents, grappling with the cost-of-living crisis, and schools, contending with issues like behaviour, attendance and diminishing resources, are facing immense pressures.

Getting this right is the missing piece of the education jigsaw, with the Education Endowment Foundation finding that improved parent participation can lead to an additional four months of academic progress per year.

Yet it’s clear that good parental communication does not always happen. From the parents’ perspective, a “one-size-fits-all” communication approach delivered through multiple channels often leads to parents treating communications as “noise”.

Alarmingly, 47 per cent of parents believe their feedback isn’t heard or acted upon, and this has led to a 25 per cent increase in formal complaints to Ofsted. More than 15,000 complaints are made to Ofsted annually, though only a small fraction trigger action.

This breakdown in relations can escalate to abuse, with 70 per cent of school leaders reporting an increase in challenging interactions with parents.

It’s also striking to see that communication from schools tends to drop off as children progress, with primary schools scoring 61 per cent on average for two-way communication practice compared with secondary schools scoring 51 per cent, according to our research.

Better school and parent communication

So, how can schools effectively foster better parent participation and engagement?

1. Evaluate parent communications: schools often operate at a fast pace, delivering communications without sufficient evaluation of their impact. It is crucial to measure the effectiveness of digital communication by examining open and click-through rates and identifying disengaged parent groups. This data-driven approach helps schools to understand their starting point.

2. Ask parents how they want communications: proactively seeking parent input on their preferred communication channels and frequency is vital. Creating a “you said, we did” moment fosters shared ownership and encourages engagement.

3. Make parent participation accountable: schools with designated accountability for parent participation, such as a family liaison officer or a parent participation lead, show significantly better outcomes.

For instance, Richard Barnes Academy, in Peterborough, employs family liaison officers, who support families at home and help young people to find engaging activities, recognising that traditional homework doesn’t fit their context. Similarly, TEAM Education Trust’s Early Help Team builds trusting relationships through home visits, school-based interventions and referrals to community resources, ensuring that families feel supported and not judged.

This personal approach helps to get ahead of any breakdown in trust and helps to create closer relationships between staff and families.

4. Train those with communication responsibility: the rise in parent complaints is often linked to poor communication, and a staggering 95 per cent of teachers have never received formal training on handling complaints.

Standardising the inclusion, accessibility and impact of communications through training ensures alignment across the school team.

Uphall Primary School, in Essex, significantly improved parent-school relations by investing time in listening exercises with both staff and parents, approaching conversations with openness and a lack of defensiveness, and ensuring that all sessions ended with clear action points.

This proactive, empathetic leadership helped to overcome a history of negativity and poor Ofsted ratings.

5. Ensure inclusive volunteering: Thornden Wood Primary School, in Kent, realised the need to work with struggling parents, not just pupils, including those from a traveller background, who can have negative views of school, influenced by historic prejudice, and who also can have poor literacy.

It made an effort to ensure that these parents felt part of the community. For example, a pupil’s father with a large van was asked to help transport items for outdoor play. This not only supported the school but also created opportunities for staff to read him his child’s letters and work with him during visits. He kept his daughter at the school for her entire time rather than moving on.

Strong and respectful relationships

Ultimately, while tensions between staff and families will always exist, creating strong, respectful relationships that acknowledge the realities faced by both parents and schools is essential for stopping issues from flaring up.

More importantly, get the tone of the ongoing school-parent conversation right and you can ensure that children’s best interests remain at the heart of their education.

Jason Elsom is CEO of charity Parentkind