Engaging parents during school closures

Teachers and other school staff face new challenges during this extraordinary time, as they support families at home. This article aims to provide some support and advice around these unique challenges, drawing on a range of research about parental engagement, but should also provide insight for work in schools far beyond the present circumstances. Homes, not classrooms The first thing to say is that these are extraordinary times, and we shouldn’t be trying to recreate classrooms at home, or recreate the same style of learning at home that would generally happen in the classroom – first, because it’s simply impossible, and second, because it wouldn’t work. Homes are, in general, not classrooms and rarely contain the numbers of children that inhabit most classrooms. School settings have evolved to be efficient (more or less) in providing education to groups of children – groups who are gathered together by age, rather than by being members of the same family. Although a g