Family School Partnerships

Children flourish where there is a strong relationship between schools and parents. The more parents are involved with their children's education and school, the greater the child's chances of success.

Opportunities for involvement vary from school to school from volunteering in the classroom, tuckshop, on excursions, through to active participation in parents' and friends' groups and sitting on school councils.

However limited your ability to be involved, it is worth the effort. Children love to see their parents at school.

The Benefits of Parent Involvement in Their Child?s Education

"When families are involved in their children?s education in positive ways, children can achieve higher grades and test scores, have better attendance at school, complete more homework, demonstrate more positive attitudes and behaviour, graduate at higher rates and have greater enrolment in higher education"
Henderson & Berler (1994) A new Generation of Evidence: The Family is Critical to Student Achievement. USA National Committee for Citizens in Education

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Family School Partnership Framework

The Framework is a short and easy to follow document that outlines a clear process for schools to develop family school partnerships. Prepared by the Australian Parents Council (APC), Australian Council of State School Organisations (ACSSO), the Australian Government and others, the Framework incorporates existing good practice and provides an agreed national approach to helping schools and families work on family school partnerships.

The Framework is a resource for school communities. Its purpose is to encourage and assist schools, school systems, parent groups and families to support family-school partnerships.

To download the Framework, click here

Family School Partnerships Project

61 schools participated in the Federal Department of Education, Science and Training Project, 2005 in conjunction with APC and ACCSO. The schools were given $10,000 to action research the framework in improving partnerships and many spent the money on employing parent liaison officers from their parent communities.

The findings over the trial period were as follows:

1. There are significant educational and social gains that demonstrate the value of the family school partnership ideal and provide strong grounds for adopting and promoting the concept as widely as possible.

2. Large majorities of parents said their involvement in their school?s partnership project had:

Led to their knowing more about the kinds of activities going on in the school generally (60%);
Led to their knowing more about what their children were being taught in school (62%);
Been good for their children?s education (69%).

3. Valuable though the partnership ideal is, it requires considerable cultural change. There is a need for principals and teachers to readily acknowledge and appreciate the role of the parents, not only as ?first educators? but as ?continuing educators?, and to see a place for them in the educational life of the school. There is a need for parents to recognise and appreciate the power and importance of their educative role, and to see the value of the attributes they can bring to the education process. For many people this means looking at the school-home relationship in an entirely new light. This will not happen overnight. It means changing many decades of attitudes and beliefs about who is responsible for what in the raising of children.

4. Developing parent-school partnerships requires a new way of thinking about issues of control and power, and creative thinking about reaching out to those who are or feel excluded. Some schools are further along the path of recognising these requirements than are others, and schools take many different approaches to making partnerships real. These approaches are informed by the school?s own circumstances: its history, the outlook and commitment of the Principal, the economic, social and geographical conditions of its community.

To read more about the project and look at individual case studies, you can click here to download the report.