We have just had a sesion on the importance of having parrents contributions in school and how we can improve this at my home schoo.
The main areas we looked at is how can we create a good link between the school and the parent and why it is important.
We identified that some parrents adopt the attitude that once their pupils get to secondary school they just expect the teachers to sort out their educations and they take a back seat role. This makes it very difficult to re in-force work that is needing to be doneby pupils that don’t put the effort in that they are supposed to be. It would be a lie to say that parrents don’t show much interest as many do but just choose not to as the lines of communications are not so clear.
At my home school they have a good system for allowing pupils homework to be check by parrents this is simply done by asking parents to sign the homework book each week then the tutor countersigns this. These contact books are used by teachers to put warnings and merrits alike. This is so that parrents can also see this and it is a good way of pupils being able to show what they are achieving in school. Parrents should be actively using the contact book each week and teachers are not using it as much as they could be.
The possiblity is to use an electronic system of comunication with parents with a parrents portal. Independant schools are on the whole better at this as parrents are paying for the education and sometimes expect results.
If parrents can back teachers for the work they set then it shows pupils that they are required to do this and they are then usually inclinded to see the importance of this.