Promoting Parental Engagement

[HappyMaz]

I got my December edition of FirstBite today, and see that the DCSF is researching how practitioners can promote wider parental participation. They are looking for people who work with children between birth and 19 years old to submit their ideas, and specific information about what has worked well within their settings. Alternatively, if you have ideas about why certain approaches haven't been successful in engaging parents, they'd like to hear that too.

 

There's no consultation document, they're just asking for people to email their ideas and experiences.

 

Sounds like a good idea to shape policy, I think.

 

Here's the link to the page on Teachernet, and the address to send your emails to is parental.engagement@dcsf.gsi.gov.uk

 

Maz

[Rea]

God if I only knew how to engage them.

We've had our Christmas fayre today and been thoroughly demoralised at the lower than low turn out. My table was lucky dip, sieve the sand to find money and envelopes of reindeer food. I made the grand total of £9.18.

I'm never doing one again whne you think of all the work that went into it. I wont go on, you all know what it takes to put something like this on, we even sold 4 tables to the church and others.

Not a happy day except for seeing some old friends and having a great laugh.

 

 

So bah humbug to 'em all

[HappyMaz]

Not a happy day except for seeing some old friends and having a great laugh.

Oh dear! What a washout. It is so hard when you put so much effort into something and it isn't well supported. Glad you could see some positives in the day though, even if you didn't make much money.

 

Put your feet up and have a good night!

 

Maz

[hali]

oh gosh Rea how awful - it is a letdown isnt it!

[Panders]

God if I only knew how to engage them.

We've had our Christmas fayre today and been thoroughly demoralised at the lower than low turn out. My table was lucky dip, sieve the sand to find money and envelopes of reindeer food. I made the grand total of £9.18.

I'm never doing one again whne you think of all the work

 

Oh dear Rea, truly what a shame. We must think of new ways - the tried and tested are not always coming up trumps anymore - parents are somehow different nowadays and perhaps we need a different approach to our fund raising ideas.

 

Although my son's school continues to have quiz nights, they also do an armchair quiz too, not too disimilar to ones we have on here - those parents who cannot or will not engage face to face do have a go at those. The PTA also ensure extra funds by making the boys pay for the privilege of non-school uniform days - perhaps we could charge for dress up days! Thing is large schools can get hold of lots of cash in one go at their events, unless you can engage the greater public the same people are always contributing. Can the committee have tables at other local events throughout the year and sell donated goods perhaps.

 

Do a pre-school calendar - one of our local infant schools raises some money that way, they even invite the new Sept. intake to go along so that when they are ready to sell them the new children are on there too. You can even pay to have your child's birthday printed on the appropriate page.

 

 

 

This year we raised money for Children in Need by taking photographs of the children dressed in full nativity outfits against our stable background - these shots were the type parents couldn't get on the day, so they were more than happy to put money in the collection tin. We let the children dress up as many times as they wanted, as whatever they wanted some of them were a bit stagey but we had them printed up in 7x5 glossy and they came out rather well.