There are many different names for family-school engagement – parent involvement, family-school partnership, etc. All are intended to describe specific ways that a school works directly with parents/caregivers and families to support the student to foster academic achievement or well-being.
In a program context, family-school engagement can be a set of activities, strategies or approaches that are often sustained, collaborative, and specifically target students’ caregivers to provide specific supports to the student in alignment with educators and other education staff.
Specifically, programs that include specific components have been shown to have a positive effect on students: relational components (communication, collaboration, supporting the caregiver-educator relationship) and structural components (home-based involvement and behavioural supports) while programs with multiple components have the greatest benefit. Family-school engagement has been shown to have positive impacts on students’ social emotional skills (pro-social behaviour.
WHY EDUCATORS LIKE THIS PROGRAM
- Dependent on the program but does not have to be resource heavy.