Home-school agreement
Post covid, the increasing numbers of parents, who are rejecting traditional schooling, making complaints and coalescing around WhatsApp and Facebook complaint groups, mean it’s never been harder to agree on all things with all families.
Being clear on what you are agreeing on is one strategy that can help.
Whether you are leader looking to tighten things up, or a teacher in search of some authority to back up your actions in challenging situations, this week’s highlight from the We Are In Beta Community will help.
Policy and Practice Researcher, Emily Wood, has found 28 schools (with high parent view response rates) and taken a deep dive into their home-school agreements to find out how they do it.
You can also catch up last week’s masterclass on reducing disruption.
We - schools - Are In Beta - always learning (when we are clear on our expectations of each other).
✍️ Home-school agreements: strategies from examples at 28 secondary schools
When parents and schools encounter disagreements it impacts students' overall educational experience.
Miscommunication or divergent expectations damage the support available for a child's learning, hindering academic progress, well-being and life chances.
Recognising and addressing these barriers through open communication, cultural sensitivity, and proactive measures are essential for fostering a successful partnership between homes and schools and ensuring students' holistic development.
But how do you do it?
In search of an answer, Emily spent five days scanning 28 school websites to find examples…
Want us to research policies and practices for you?
Reply to this email to tell us what policy you’re writing and we’ll do a lot of the leg work for you.
📝 How schools agree with home - what Emily explores:
the benefits of having a home-school agreement
the criteria she used to find schools with examples
what the key components of a home school agreement are
how to access 25+ home-school agreement resources and 7 stand out case studies
🔎 5 home-school agreement observations
The full article shares 50+ observations from the 27 documents looked at.
Here are five that might get you thinking about what your school does:
📝 Witten agreement - 27/28 schools had a written agreement in place (which required signatures).
🛑 Anti-bullying - 1/28 had an anti-bullying agreement in it.
🤬 Treatment of staff - 11/28 agreements referenced their expectation that parents treat all staff members with respect, appropriate language.
📲 Social media complaints - 4/28 made specific reference to parents not utilising social media to complain or communicate with the school.
💤🍜 Sleep and diet - 2/28 Schools made it a requirement for parents to ensure their children receive an adequate amount of sleep and a balanced diet.
To read about the other 45 observations and learn how schools agree on how they will support students with home…
🗒️ 7 stand out case studies
You don’t have the time to read all the resources, so we’ve done it for you.
We’ve found the most practical bits and organised them into 7 case studies about
Work experience
Mental health
Social media use
Providing named points of contact
Home learning
Parental participation
Clarity of who is responsible for what
This a members only resource. Not a member of Pastoral Champions?
⏯️ Eliminating disruption with “what we dos”
Members of the Pastoral Champions Community can now watch the replay of Headteacher, Nat Nabarro’s masterclass on their standard operating procedures at Blaise High School.
You can also download more than 10 examples, which have taken years to develop.
Nat has kindly shared them with the community here.
On a personal note
“My dad says you can’t do that” and “My mum says I do have to what you tell me.”
Were lines I heard on regular basis in my early days of teaching.
When managing their behaviour, challenging students would say whatever they could about teachers’ authority and their rights as students - simply to avoid the consequences of their actions.
In response, I wanted to say “Yes, I can. Yes, you do. It’s completely in line with the behaviour policy”.
But if I am honest, I often questioned whether they were right.
Had I overstepped the mark? Can I enforce that sanction? Are their parents right?
After all, they had (in many cases) been there longer than I had. They knew how things worked there better than I did.
Then I discovered my school had a home-school agreement.
Everything changed.
Knowing the home-school agreement and the behaviour policy inside out gave me the confidence to respond the “My parents said…” objections and helped me manage their behaviour more successfully.
I’d highly recommend knowing yours, reading others and making sure everyone is on the same page.
PS. My wife and I are expecting our second baby at the end of the month so things might look a bit different here when it arrives.
All tips on making the jump from one to two kids, gratefully received.
(Seriously, I need them!)
Just reply to this email.
Thanks for reading.
@NiallAlcock and the We Are In Beta team.
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