Rewriting the future: Raising ambition and attainment in Welsh schools
Rewriting the future: Raising ambition and attainment in Welsh schools is a 2014 report that “describes the Welsh Government’s programme and its four key themes to tackle the link between poverty and educational underachievement in schools, for use in developing interventions to raise the attainment of learners living in poverty.”
Section 2 (pp. 20-22), titled ‘Family and community engagement’, deals with the already well known link between parental engagement and pupil attainment. The report emphasises how difficult it is to establish and maintain this link in so-called hard to reach areas, but goes on to say how effective such a link can be for strengthening communities and positively impacting educational practices:
Many schools in disadvantaged communities find that engaging parents/carers is one of the biggest challenges they face…Community engagement has a positive influence on learning outcomes. Schools that reach out and actively engage the community in the life of the school and the school in the life of the community have a positive impact on educational outcomes
In England, under the new Ofsted inspection framework, schools are graded on their ability to devise and implement effective parental engagement strategies. In order to obtain an outstanding judgement in terms of Leadership and Management, there must be evidence that:
The school has highly successful strategies for engaging with parents and carers, to the very obvious benefit of pupils, including those who might traditionally find working with the school difficult.
The criteria for success in this category is the same in England and Wales; family/community engagement is crucial for schools that want to achieve ‘outstanding’ rating from the inspectorate, and Schoop is an ideal tool for helping to meet this challenge.
Download the app and enter 123 when prompted for a Schoop ID to access our demo content channel and see how Schoop can work in your school or community organisation
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