How to improve your school with parent voice

How to improve your school with parent voice

It is vital for SBMs to actively work on improving the school by incorporating diverse perspectives for valuable feedback. A huge asset for schools to utilise is parents. They can often provide key feedback to improve important areas of the school. Parents want what’s best for their children, and they all can have different perspectives and ideas. Use them more and encourage parents to be more involved by using our tips on how to improve your school with parent voice.

Ways to involve parents more in the school community

Discover some simple ways to involve parents in your school community more to create a stronger parent voice. Implement these strategies to help take valuable steps toward improving your school.

Offer the role of parent governors

Involve parents more in your school community by offering the role of parent governors. Create a vacancy post to share on your communication feed. Ensure to be clear of the expectations of a parent governor and show the student benefit and added value to your school. Doing this will bring a fresh perspective from a parent's point of view, leading to an improvement in your school.

The representation of school governors is extremely limited with the majority being white British and retirees. It is vital to try and gain a mixed group for the school board made up of people from all sorts of backgrounds to have as many different and fresh perspectives as possible. Ensure to communicate the time and effort needed to parents so they are aware and they can suitably choose if this role would work for them.

Ask for contribution towards policies

There are a few policies for your school that directly impact parents’ daily school interactions. These policies can be made to include parents' thoughts and opinions. Gain information from parents about what they find most challenging and hold a group or governor team meeting. Use this to discuss solutions to challenges that are correlated to certain policies and list them to try out. Doing this allows parents to be heavily involved and helps to improve your school.

Ensure to let parents know that the feedback won't immediately change policies and that the agreed amendments need to be implemented in a practical way. Whatever is discussed with the group, transfer this onto your school communication platform so that every parent feels included and can have a say in the policies.

Seek help with curricular development

Seek for parents' advice when reviewing the curriculum for the school. It can be a vital insight for SBMs to listen to their opinions and thoughts about what their children are learning. Many parents would like subjects that help develop children and support adult life skills, such as food technology.

It is an opportunity to detail to parents what subjects entail so that they can add to it if necessary. This is particularly useful for areas such as PSHE, where you can gain different cultural perspectives from parents. As an example, a parent could notice their religion has been missed and they could offer benefits of why it’s important to learn about it. They can also offer topics and pointers to include.

Ask help with uniform standards

Allow parents to have input on uniform standards and what they can dress their children in to comply with your school's policy. Doing this makes sure that these standards are followed and no one gets penalised for not complying. Ask for parents’ help with what works best for the uniform. Consider plain clothing with no school logo for items such as shirts, skirts and trousers and PE kits.

Let parents determine what works for them based on their income, how much they can spend on uniforms and the ages of their children. Items of clothing with the school logo come at a larger cost and children can grow out of them quickly. See what their opinions are on this and find alternative plain clothes to aid parents with affording uniforms. This prevents children from being scolded for not wearing the logo uniforms.

Communicate via social media

Create easy two-way communication between the school and parents. Doing this encourages parents to interact with the school. One of the best ways to do this is via social media platforms that teachers can use to save their time by posting all communications across all social media in one click. Plus, this communication allows parents to get involved in conversations and build a community between them.

Try these tips on how to improve your school with parent voice to incorporate diverse perspectives and valuable feedback. The more you can listen to parents and communicate with them, the better chance of finding solutions to help improve your school. Ensure to listen to their opinions, thoughts and ideas and at least try some of the solutions if necessary. Using these tips also helps to grow a parent community in your school which can be a huge advantage.

Want more advice on how to improve your school? Read our how to improve your school with student voice blog for tips & techniques to include students feedback!