Many schools and other professionals working with families often talk about families and communities being hard to reach.
These may include parents/carers who have:

• English as an additional language
• low literacy skills
• a family member in prison or who has been remanded in the past
• had negative experiences at schools
• previously or personally experienced bullying or discrimination in an educational establishment.

These families, who for whatever reason are not engaging with schools, will often miss out on crucial opportunities to benefit from the whole school offer including attending parents’ evenings, school events such as fetes, performances, curriculum and sports days. Their children may not be accessing extra curricular activities. The parents may not have the confidence or tools to support their children’s education.

But is it that these families are hard to reach or is really the case that schools are not reaching hard enough?

It is the school’s responsibility to monitor parental engagement and remove the barriers that may be adversely affecting some parents from actively participating in the life of the school.

The Equality Diversity Inclusion Team (EDIT) can support schools to overcome some of these barriers to family engagement.  For more details and information on how EDIT can help, please click one of the boxes below.

You can get in touch with us using our designated contact page - contact EDIT here!