This is two part course:
Part 1: 26th April 2023: 1.00pm – 4.00pm
Part 2: 10th May 2023: 10.00am – 1.00pm
Find out more about virtual attendance
Applying the four pillars of parental engagement at your school will enable you to take a planned approach to connecting with parents that delivers positive school and student results.
Learn how taking a planned and sustained approach to building strong relationships with parents can deliver positive outcomes for your school, students and your school team. This practical course gives you simple tips and tricks that you can try as soon as you get back to school.
The content is based around the four pillars of parental engagement – knowledge, environment, culture and communication. You will define what successful parental engagement looks like for you, how to evaluate where you are right now, and then specific actions using the four pillars to close the gaps and achieve success.
Based on best practice engagement theory and communication, this course fully supports the UK Government’s ‘Levelling Up’ initiative, by providing simple and effective strategies to engage hard to reach parents, in disadvantaged areas.
While all teachers will find this course useful, it will be invaluable to those with specific responsibility for communicating with parents and setting school strategy.
The facilitators believe in the power of listening, which is central to their approach to parental engagement. You will benefit directly from this, during the course, with many opportunities to listen and share best practice with your peers.
Anyone within school responsible for parental engagement or communication, including head teachers and senior leaders, those responsible for setting school strategy, pastoral teams, support staff responsible for marketing and communication, any teachers who want to improve their ability to communicate with parents.
Key Learning Objectives
- Learn about best practice parental engagement and how it can deliver positive results for your school
- Understand what taking a planned and sustained approach to building strong relationships with parents could look like for your school
- Know how to evaluate your starting point and current strengths and opportunities
- Develop a school-specific plan that sets out how you will close gaps to achieve good parental engagement
- Learn how to gather support for your parental engagement plan
- Understand how to communicate with different types of parents and colleagues to build trusted relationships
- Share and hear practical ideas from other school professionals
Facilitators
Karen Dempster and Justin Robbins are highly experienced communication experts, Fellows of the Institute of Internal Communications and certified DISC personality profile practitioners. They founded Fit2Communicate in 2015, through a shared passion to make a difference for future generations, through helping schools to communicate.
Several of their unique school communication models featured in their first book, released in 2017, called “How to build communication success in your school”. A follow up book, called “The Four Pillars of Parental Engagement” was released in August 2021. They work directly with schools to help improve engagement with all school stakeholders and regularly speak at conferences about the practical strategies in their books.
Prior to 2015, Karen spent 20 years in marketing and communication roles, while Justin spent 15 years working in corporate communications around the globe
