RIG event: Leadership for parental engagement,in and after the pandemic

The BELMAS RIG: Leadership for Parental Engagement, held a Zoom-based RIG meeting on 24 July 2020.

Over 80 participants signed up for the RIG meeting, and over 50 were able to attend on the day.

There were three presentations, and a great deal of useful discussion during the day.

The presentations were:

Eileen Prior, from CONNECT, ¹ shared the results of the two parents’ surveys CONNECT has run since March (results can be found here: https://connect.scot/news/connect-report-our-second-parentcarer-lockdown-survey-findings). Eileen shared some of the top level findings from the first week of the second survey conducted by CONNECT. Highlights included: most parents felt that they had what they needed to support school work at home – but 13% of parents did not, and almost half of parents were at least a bit worried about sending children back to school. Perhaps the two most striking findings were that over 80% of parents wanted to be consulted on how school would work as children returned from lockdown, and that the greatest issue for families was that children were missing the social interaction with their friends. Eileen posed a series of questions, which included how we can, as a system, recognise the work that parents have done to support learning during this period, how children’s voices could be meaningfully heard in relation to coming back into school, and how can we all share what we have learned during this time?

Eliana Maria Osorio Saez, https://researchportal.bath.ac.uk/en/persons/eliana-maria-osorio-saeza PhD student at the University of Bath, reported on a multinational survey she and colleagues have conducted about how parents are coping during the COVID lockdown. The survey had reached over 10,000 parents and over 1,500 in England. The preliminary findings were interesting – 15% of families had no access to a computer, and 44% shared one device for all members of the family. Most parents (88%) were getting things from the school to do with their children and home, and almost as many (81%) were ‘always or often’ doing spontaneous learning activities with their children, beyond the school remit.

Geraint Jones, head teacher Coedffranc Primary School https://coedffranc-primary-school.j2bloggy.com/ discussed the work his school has done around supporting parents, both before and during lockdown. Geraint has been at his school only a short time, but has worked hard to support parents throughout the school. That work paid off significantly during lockdown, as the relationships which had been built up previously allowed parents and staff to work together to support learning out of school. Geraint’s school has a dedicated family support worker to further this work; participants were interested in how this post came to be and how it was financed and how it functioned.

The RIG meeting showed how involved – engaged – parents and families have been in learning throughout the lockdown. They have, of course, always been engaged but school closures have brought this to the fore. Participants were clear that what has been learned over this period should be put to good use as schools reopen.

Participants in the discussion included researchers, practitioners and those engaged in the policy framework. The discussions were lively, with lots of ideas and information exchanged. By popular demand, another Zoom RIG is being planned for later on this Autumn.

Holding a RIG meeting via Zoom had some very definite advantages as well as challenges. The main challenge was keeping track of the chat stream, which allowed participants to ask questions to the presenters. This was ably managed by Caroline Zwierzchowska-Dod, a PhD student from Swansea University (who will be presenting on her own research in the next RIG meeting). Caroline was able to collate and curate questions; it’s essential to have someone dedicated to this task.

The event was advertised on social media, and participants were asked to sign up to the event through EventBrite; this ensured that participants were sent the information about the meeting securely.

The advantages of an online RIG were many, including the ability to have participants from a wide variety of places come together without having to deal with travel or distance.