What the evidence says
The Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) Toolkit rates parental engagement as having a moderate positive impact on pupil progress — approximately +3 months — based on consistent evidence across multiple studies. The cost is low relative to the impact.
Key findings from the evidence base:
- Parent engagement has the greatest impact when it directly supports learning at home (homework help, reading, conversation about school)
- Simply increasing school communication volume does not reliably improve outcomes without improving quality and accessibility
- Engagement interventions targeted at disadvantaged families show the strongest relative impact
- Parent engagement initiatives frequently fail because they do not address the barriers preventing engagement (work commitments, language, past school experience)
Common barriers to parent engagement
- Work commitments — parents cannot attend daytime or early evening events
- Language barriers — EAL families cannot access English-only communications
- Literacy challenges — written communications exclude some parents
- Negative associations with school from their own educational experience
- Feeling unwelcome or judged by the school
- Not knowing how to help their child with schoolwork
- Not receiving school communications (outdated contact details, non-deliverable SMS)
8 evidence-based parent engagement strategies
Remove communication barriers first
No engagement strategy works if communications don't reach parents. Accurate contact data via MIS sync, multilingual messaging, and multi-channel delivery (push, email, SMS) are prerequisites. Fix reach before focusing on content quality.
Communicate what parents can do, not just what the school is doing
The EEF evidence is clear: engagement that involves parents in learning activities at home has more impact than communication about school activities. Every curriculum communication should include a "how you can help at home" section.
Use short, frequent communication rather than long, infrequent newsletters
Weekly short updates are opened and read significantly more than monthly newsletters. Push notifications with 2–3 sentences have higher engagement than email newsletters with 500 words.
Create low-barrier ways for parents to respond
Parent engagement is bidirectional. If the only way to respond to school is by phone call or attending a meeting, engagement from working parents or those with anxiety about school contact will be lower. Reply-via-text, online forms, and parent evenings with flexible slots all reduce the response barrier.
Send positive communications proactively
Many schools only contact parents when something is wrong. Schools with the highest parent trust send a significant proportion of proactive positive messages — recognising effort, sharing news, celebrating learning. These build the relationship that makes safeguarding and difficult conversations more effective.
Involve parents in curriculum and learning goals
Sharing what children are learning this term, why, and how parents can support creates engaged parents. Schools that publish curriculum overviews and learning goals for each term, with home support suggestions, see significantly higher parent engagement in homework and home reading.
Target hard-to-reach families specifically
Generic engagement initiatives tend to reach already-engaged parents. Design specific approaches for families where engagement is low: home visits for new admissions, translated materials for EAL families, phone-first contact for parents with literacy challenges. Targeting the tail matters more than improving the average.
Measure and improve
Use delivery and open rate data from your communication platform to identify which communications reach parents effectively and which are missed. Unexpectedly low open rates on a specific year group or cohort often indicate outdated contact details or a group with lower digital engagement — actionable intelligence for improvement.
Frequently asked questions
What does Ofsted look for in parent engagement?
Ofsted's Education Inspection Framework (EIF) considers how effectively a school engages with parents as part of evaluating leadership and management. Inspectors look for evidence that parents are well-informed about their child's progress and the school's curriculum, that communication is accessible to all families, and that the school responds to parent concerns. Delivery data and communication logs from MySchoolUpdate can serve as evidence of systematic, accessible communication.
How does communication platform choice affect parent engagement rates?
Platform choice has a direct impact on reach. Schools using browser push notifications (MySchoolUpdate) typically achieve 75–90% parent opt-in — compared to 40–65% for app-based platforms (ParentMail, ClassDojo) and lower for email-only systems. Higher reach means more parents receive communications, which is the first step toward engagement.
Build better parent engagement
MySchoolUpdate gives you the multi-channel communication infrastructure to implement these strategies effectively. Book a demo to see how it works with your school community.
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Real-Time Notifications · Attendance Notifications · Multiple Children