Developing effective partnerships with parents and the wider community to support pupils’ learning and raise their aspirations.
Information about the school
Bryn Celyn Primary School is situated in the North East of the city and mainly serves the Bryn Celyn estate and surrounding areas. The school has 199 pupils and is one form entry. The school has a Flying Start Setting on site that supports early education and transition into the school nursery. The school currently has 74% of pupils eligible for free school meals.
Context and background to the effective or innovative practice
Develping effective partnerships with parents is vitally important in order to support pupils’ learning. Research has shown that the single most important influencing factor in a child’s education is parental support.(Soroya Rene Fyne-Sinclair, 2016) ‘Children whose parents are involved in their education have a tendency to progress and flourish in all aspects of their life (Vaden-Kieman & McManus 2005).
Fostering positive relationships with the local community has been crucial in order to raise standards throughout the school. The school takes every opportunity to involve parents in its life. It often has to reach out to parents in order to seek their views by using a wide range of approaches to engage as many parents as possible. One method of achieving this is by asking parents to contribute to the School Improvement Plan by completing an annual questionnaire. The school provides parents with the support they need to access the questionnaires. Staff make themselves available in the playground at the end of the school day with ipads to complete questionnaires and offer drop in sessions to support parents in school. Feedback from questionnaires highlighted the parents’ desire for more opportunities to work with the school on ways they could develop their own literacy and numeracy skills in order to support their children’s progress in learning.
Description of nature of strategy or activity
The school used many strategies and agencies to help engage with the parents. It recognises that getting to know parents and developing trust and mutual respect is key to parental engagement. Meeting and greeting each morning along with more formal activities all help to form working relationships with parents that benefit the pupils.
The school works with a number of groups to support parental engagement including, Cardiff and Vale College Families Learning Together Courses. Here, parents develop their own literacy and numeracy skills to enable them to work with their children at home. Parents can earn points that enable them to achieve an National vocational qualification (NVQ) and attend other courses offered by the college. Parents enjoyed learning how to decorate cakes with an acredited course. One of the parents used these new skills to start their own cake decorating business. Curriculum evenings have helped parents understand how and what their children are learning in school. Reading clubs have shown parents a range of strategies to further improve their children’s reading. Drop in sessions after school, where staff support parents to complete job applications and school applications, are offered. This has resulted in many parents gaining secondary school places for pupils in a timely manner and a few parents accessing courses and gaining employment. ‘Family Phonic’ sessions run by staff enable parents to learn how to teach their children phonics and help them on their journey to become successful readers. Stay and play sessions encourage parents into the school environment and help them understand how children’s skills develop through play, especially in the early years. The school’s bring a parent to school week was a successful event and was especially useful in building links with families. During a week in the autumn term parents applied to come to school with their children. They took part in literacy and numeracy sessions with their children. This built relationships with parents, and helped them to see how learning is structured and how the school organises its classes. Parents gained a real understanding of how their children learn, along with some strategies they could use at home. Parents reported that they were able to find out about their child’s day by asking them more informed questions about their learning. Class assemblies were an excellent way to showcase pupils’ learning and develop opportunities to speak with families about their child’s learning. Coffee mornings help to build relationships and parents helped make resources for the children’s learning. Enterprise weeks, where pupils generate ideas and make products to sell, are a good way of linking with families and building entrepreneurs of the future!
The most successful event that the school held was a careers fayre. Raising aspirations for pupils is a priority for the school. The area has high unemployment and the aspirations of pupils are often low. The school utilised its contacts and found representatives from heath, finance, education and industry to support the event. To ensure that pupils visited a range of stalls they were given a card to get stamped by at least five stall holders and Key Stage 2 pupils worked on generating questions to ask the representatives before the event. Stamped cards were put into a prize draw at the end of the event. The careers event was held after school and an unintended positive consequence of the event was that parents who were with their children accessed the information themselves, finding out about different careers they were interested in. The school hopes that this has raised the aspirations of parents to find employment or enter training. The evaluation of the event was very positive. Many pupils and parents found the event valuable; it had made them think about what they wanted to do when they left school, and how they were going to achieve their chosen career. The school now works closely with the Cardiff Commitment, ‘open your eyes week’. This builds knowledge from the initial career fayres and gives pupils an insight into a variety of careers from people working in them.
What impact has this work had on provision and learners’ standards?
Parent questionnaires show that more parents feel better equipped to help their children at home with learning. Parents feel confident to approach members of staff and ask for help when needed. Parents and school staff work together to benefit the pupils. Parents feel that school is a safe place and that they can ask for support in many aspects of their life, such as help to apply for jobs and to ask advice. All these activities have helped integrate the school into the community and take away barriers to furthering pupils learning.
How have you shared your good practice?
The school has shared some ideas with the High School Cluster.