Toolkit Parental Engagement
How to increase parental engagament?
Increasing parent engagement – activities by parents at home and at school to support their child’s learning – can yield learning gains of two to three months on average. This makes parental engagement a potentially powerful tool for reducing learning disadvantages. This applies both to the development of cognitive skills in young children, and to the development of non-cognitive (social) skills in older children. By involving parents more in their children’s education, schools can increase their influence substantially.
The question of how schools can increase parent engagement is answered in many studies. This toolkit describes the main conclusions from that literature. In doing so, we limit ourselves to:
- Aspects of parent engagement for which there is compelling evidence that they positively influence student learning, motivation, and well-being;
- Approaches that have been proven to be effective.
Together, they form a comprehensive approach to working with parents to promote cognitive and social-emotional skills in children. In addition to explaining the fundamentals of increasing parental engagement, this toolkit also provides practical guidelines for primary schools to increase parental engagement in practice.
This publication is only available in Dutch.
