Parental involvement

The importance of parental involvement in children's education is well evidenced. But how much difference does parental involvement make and what kind of involvement makes the difference?For this TLA research summary we have summarised a literature review of studies that explored the impact of parental involvement on children's educational progress and strategies for enhancing their involvement.The study is:Desforges, C. and A. Abouchaar. The impact of parental involvement, parental support and family education on pupil achievement and adjustment: a review of the literature. DfES, RR433, 2003.The review established that parental involvement has a significant positive effect on children's achievement, and that the kind of involvement that makes the most difference is the conversations parents have with their children at home. The review emphasised that parent-child conversations in the home are more valuable, in terms of enhancing pupil achievement, than parents' involvement in school activities. This does not mean that traditional activities, such as parents helping in the classroom and meeting with teachers at school have no value - there may be lots of indirect benefits of such contact, and in any case, such contact can be directly geared to encouraging and supporting parents in talking with their children about their learning at home. It is just that on their own they cannot be linked with achievement in the evidence available to date.We have found this summary more challenging to write than others. Creating TLA research features from research reviews is always difficult because of the complexity and range of the data. But this is challenging in another way. The study's findings have meant we have not been able to focus on activities that take place in school - but rather on ways in which schools can encourage parental involvement in learning at home.Nevertheless, the powerful findings that call us to reflect on our current practices make this an important study for us to wrestle with.In this summary we examine the evidence relating to the difference parents can make to their children's learning - in particular through parent-child conversations. We also look at reasons why some parents don't get involved at home as much as they might (because, for example, they do not know how they can help) and explore ways of fostering parental involvement (such as setting interactive homework that is specifically designed to encourage children to talk with adults at home).We think the research summary will increase practitioners' understanding of the importance of trying to involve parents in more extended and meaningful conversations with their children, whilst the case studies offer some practical suggestions for ways of increasing parents' involvement. The summary also discusses how the review's findings about parental involvement might be used to inform attempts at closing the social class achievement gap.