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Speech
Parents as Partners in School Education
Thursday 27 May 2004
A speech spoken to by Dr Brendan Nelson at the Framework for Family-School Partnerships Roundtable at Old Parliament House
Parents are the first and most significant influence on a child’s development and learning. As every parent knows, the most critical stages in the development and learning process begin when a child is born, long before they start school.
Schools are also critically important to ensuring that children acquire the skills and knowledge they need to grow into responsible citizens. But the role of parents as educators does not stop the moment children start their schooling. As parents we do not drop our kids off at school in the morning, pick them up in the afternoon and be unconcerned with what happens in between. First, we invest much time and effort in reviewing schools before deciding where to send our children in order to be confident that the schools meet our aspirations. We pore over school reports seeking to determine if our children are doing well and if they are not, we want to know what we can do to help them cope and adjust. When we see school policies or activities that we dislike, we want to change them. Even little things concern us because the education of our children is at stake.
This Government strongly supports parents’ desire to be active partners in their children’s school education. They should have the opportunity to become involved in all aspects of schooling, from the setting of goals and the defining of the schools values to the decision making of how to support the achievement of their individual child. Governments should develop policies to support parental engagement and schools should be active in furthering this goal. Many of our schools do just this, but it is not always the case. Best practice at the school level needs to be shared more broadly, which of course is part of the reason why we are here today.
Why parental engagement in school education matters
Parents are partners in the schooling of their children and should be treated as such. More than 30 years of research confirms that parental involvement in schools and classrooms makes schools more effective in delivering on their fundamental mission, that is children’s learning.
Some of the best research in this area has been produced by Professor Geoff Masters, the CEO of the Australian Council for Educational Research. His extensive analysis of what makes certain schools effective (which he defines as achieving high standards for their students regardless of gender, family background or socio-economic circumstances) concludes that one of the six factors of highly effective schools is that they have high levels of parent and community involvement. In these highly effective schools, parents are encouraged to “take an active role in discussing, monitoring and supporting their children’s learning” and “are involved in setting goals for the school and in developing school policies.” (Masters, 2004)
Other research also supports Professor Master’s conclusions. For example, Hill et al found that literacy development is improved when parents, schools and their communities work together (Hill et al, 2002). Feinstein & Symons (UK, 1999) concluded that parental involvement has significant effects on achievement into adolescence and that very high parental interest is associated with better exam results.
The other, equally important reason why parents should be seen as partners in school education, is because parents want to be treated as partners. This is the strong message coming from parents in the national consultation which I launched in March this year following the release of our paper, Taking Schools to the Next Level. Parents are saying that they want to work together with schools because by doing so they can support their children’s learning. They want to work with teachers to bring home and school experiences together. And they want to be involved in the development of school polices and not just in supporting delivery of what the school has already developed.
The fact that parents want to be actively engaged and involved in the schooling of their children should be a sufficient reason in itself for schools and educational authorities to be proactive in including them wherever possible and provide opportunities for them to be involved. After all, while we all have an interest in a highly educated population, it is the parents who are of course most concerned in seeing their child develop to his or her potential.
Good practice exists but more needs to be done
It is difficult to assess how well we are doing in achieving a widespread culture of parental engagement in schooling, but it is patchy. The issue is that while there are examples of exceptionally good practice in Australian schools, it is not universal. Additionally, there are some systematic policy barriers preventing further progress.
Our Lady Star of the Sea Catholic Primary School in Western Australia is cited as a good example of what should be universal practice. While I have not had the opportunity to personally visit this school as yet, I have been informed that at this school parents are involved in policy formulation and play a valuable role in the classroom as they work alongside the teacher. The school has adopted a partnership approach in every aspect of its behaviour management programme and encourages two-way communication between parents and their child’s teacher so that home and school can complement each other to develop “the whole child”. It encourages parents to contact teachers to discuss their child’s progress at any stage of the school year; runs parent workshops to ensure genuine collaboration on learning topics and activities; and openly invites constructive criticism and suggestions from parents.
Unfortunately, not every school is like Our Lady Star of the Sea. In many instances, schools see themselves as having sole charge of the education of their students and parents are not given any meaningful role in the education process. For example, in school newsletters and websites it is not uncommon to come across, under the heading ‘Parent Partnerships’, messages of the type: “help is always welcomed to run the school canteen if you can spare a few hours”; or ‘‘volunteers needed to run a stall at the school fete”. The scope of these ‘partnerships’ needs to be expanded.
Further, information about the performance of the school or the progress of a parent’s child is often ambiguous, difficult to access or non-existent. If parents are not kept fully informed how can they be fully involved in their children’s education? Provision of good information from schools to parents is the bedrock of meaningful parent-school partnerships.
As you may be aware, I have been critical of the quality of student report cards in Australia’s schools, particularly primary schools. I have been astounded by how many of them fail to provide to parents a plain-language version of how well their child is performing. For example, some reports ask the teacher to tick a box. One box says “Achieving” and the other says “Almost achieving”! Other report cards that schools provide to parents contain so much educational jargon that they are almost incomprehensible to lay parents. There is inconsistency between jurisdictions and within them.
Information about a school’s performance is also frequently poor or inaccessible, more so in some states than others. Without good accurate information, how does a parent choose a school for their child, and how does a parent have a discussion about the school’s performance on an equal footing with a principal or school council?
Professor Cuttance, who is here today and who has done extensive research on this issue which included gathering the views of more than 500 parents, states that while parents have an active interest in acquiring information about school programmes and school achievement, “there is relatively little public information available on schools.... Although many school systems across the country now routinely gather a wide range of information about individual schools, there is significant reticence in making this information available to the public.” (Cuttance & Stokes, 2000)
Cuttance notes that even when schools produce official reports, such as annual reports, they are sometimes written in a way that parents struggle to interpret or they are not accessed at all by parents. He quotes one parent who said that “I know of schools where these annual reports come out and the only person contacted is the [parent organisation] president because they know they are going to be on side.” Such practices need to change.
Where to from here?
It is time we made a concerted effort to place parents more firmly in the centre of schooling. The challenge is to spread more broadly the excellent practices that exist in many schools and to remove barriers or obstacles that might prevent parents from being more involved. For some schools, placing parents more firmly in the centre of schooling will require significant cultural change. For others, it will be simply learning from others and implementing ideas that they may not have thought about before.
From the Australian Government’s perspective, we have designed and announced policies specifically around providing a greater involvement of parents in school education. These policies will be enacted in legislation that I will be introducing into Parliament in June and I believe that they will make a significant impact in supporting the role of parents in schooling. Let me mention a few of these policies.
First, from January of next year, it will no longer be satisfactory for schools to provide meaningless or overly complex school reports to parent. Parents want a “fair and honest” assessment, in plain language, of how their child is progressing. If their child is struggling, they want to know about it so that they can get assistance. It is not good enough for schools to hide behind wishy-washy language when writing school reports because of fear of telling bad news. Hence, as part of school funding legislation, I will be including some broad principles of what a school report should contain. These principles will not be overly prescriptive but they will provide broad guidelines that will ensure that parents receive the truth in plain language about their child’s progress. I have asked Professor Cuttance to provide some advice in designing these broad principles.
Second, all schools will also be required to report to parents their child's achievement against the national reading, writing and numeracy benchmarks in years three, five and seven. These national tests are the only objective measure of how well a child is performing against national standards and yet in four states the only people who currently don’t know the results of the students’ tests are their parents! You may be aware that I recently announced a tutorial coupon scheme to be piloted in the four states and territories that do report the test results to parents against the national benchmark. This pilot will place a $700 tutorial credit directly into the hands of parents whose children are not reaching the year 3 reading benchmark. It can be redeemed either at the school or with a recognised tutor. It is a further effort to place power in the hands of parents to further their children’s education.
Unfortunately not everyone agrees that empowering parents in this regard is appropriate. I was very concerned to read, for example, the comments by Tasmanian Education Minister, Paula Wriedt who stated that she did not want the $700 credits to go to parents as they couldn’t be trusted to actually use them! (Tasmanian Parliament Hansard, May 25 2004) I fear that she is not alone in these views.
I will also be placing in the school funding legislation the requirement that all schools publish a range of school performance information so that parents have objective data to assess schools when making school selection and have good information in order to be assured that the school is performing as well as it should. Such information will include academic outcomes (eg average year 12 results, percentage of students achieving national benchmarks in literacy and numeracy, improvements on previous years), school leaver destinations, teacher qualifications and number of teachers doing ongoing professional learning, staff and student retention and absentee rates.
For Indigenous parents, we will be setting aside $62.5 million over the next four years to fund innovative projects that tackle entrenched localised problems, particularly in remote areas. An important element of this funding is that the projects submitted for funding must be developed jointly between schools and Indigenous parents and communities. Again, the aim is to give a greater role to parents in dealing with issues in regards to the education of children.
We are also making a concerted effort to address the chronic shortage of male teachers in primary schools. The quality of teachers, more than their gender, is the most important factor in improving academic outcomes. However, teachers do more than just impart facts and teach our children how to learn. They also play a critical role – second only to parents – in the emotional and social development of our children. And in this task, men bring different attributes to women. Both boys and girls, but particularly boys, need men as role models. Unfortunately, however, one in six Australian boys lives in a fatherless family. (ABS statistics) When they attend school, only 21% of their teachers are men and this number is dropping. This means that there is a significant proportion of boys who go from birth to secondary school without a single positive male role model. I am determined to take practical steps to change this, not least by introducing 500 scholarships for men to encourage them to be primary school teachers. Parents, particularly single mothers, should have the right to be assured that men will feature in their child’s primary school education. The Government will be pursuing a small legislative change to the Sex Discrimination Act to enable this to occur and to allow other educational authorities to follow suit in offering male only teacher scholarships.
The Australian Government also remains committed to supporting a voice and research capacity for parents through our funding of the Australian Council of State Schools Organisation (ACSSO) and the Australian Parents Council (APC). Grants for these two bodies total $165,000 and $115,000 respectively this year. A further $15,000 helps maintain the operations of the Isolated Children’s Parents’ Association, which represents the interests of families living in isolated areas who have school aged children.
Of course, the Australian Government’s programmes, our policies, and our public statements of support can only achieve so much. Real change needs to occur at the school level through strong and effective school leadership and supported by parents. This brings us to the reason that we are all here today.
Today, governments and educational authorities are working with ACSSO and APC on the next stage of the Family-School Partnership project. The aim of this project is to identify best practices of effective parent-school partnerships and to promote these broadly in order to ensure that every school is on the path of improvement.
The key aspect of this project is the development of a Framework. This Framework will outline the principles for good parental engagement and the actions that can be put in place. It will provide guidelines on what parents and schools can expect from each other. I understand that today you will be developing a first draft of this Framework which will then be circulated widely for comment before it is finalised.
The Australian Government has already contributed $100,000 towards this Family-School Partnership Project, and I would envisage that once you have completed your work, we will support the trialling of the Family-School Partnership Framework in Australian schools in order to identify which practices or strategies are most effective.
Conclusion
I encourage all Australian schools to invest time and effort in providing parents with the opportunities and support they need to become more involved in their child’s education and the life of the school. All parents – regardless of income, education or cultural background – are involved in their children’s learning and want their children to do well in school because this is essential to their future. We know that investing in building strong partnerships with parents will pay dividends – not just for students and their families, but also for schools – in the form of improved learning, behaviour, engagement and community connectedness.
It will be the partnerships we build between parents, school staff, students and the wider community that will ensure our schools will become models of the way we would like our society to function.
References
Cuttance, P. & Stokes, S. (2000). Reporting on student and school achievement. Canberra: Department of Education, Training and Youth Affairs.
Feinstein, L. & Symons, J. (1999). Attainment in Secondary School. Oxford Economic Papers, 51.
Hill, S., Comber, B., Louden, W., Rivalland, T. & Reid, J. (2002). 100 Children Turn 10. Canberra: Department of Education, Science and Training.
Masters, G. (2004). Beyond political rhetoric: the research on what makes a school good. In Online Opinion at http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=2100.
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