BESA CORNER


In our regular feature this month featuring members of the UK education suppliers’ trade body BESA, Education Today hears from New Era Education on the benefits of constructive parental engagement; and Naimish Gohil, CEO & Founder of Show My Homework, on the importance of providing software and a service.


New Era Education


Preparing children for opportunities that offer them the best future requires more than one teacher; not only do children need to be knowledgeable they also need to be supported emotionally throughout their time in education. A complete education requires a community; a whole school leadership team, teachers, administrators, friends and families working in unison, and parents are a vital cog in this machine. Parental engagement is a broad term defined by the Department of Education as including “learning at home, school-home and home-school communication, in- school activities, decision making (e.g. being a parent governor) and collaborating with the community.” Constructive parental engagement has been shown to have a positive


effect across children’s emotional development and academic achievement, however not all parents are fully involved in their children’s education. Involving parents has a direct impact on pupil engagement, so ensuring


parents are on board with their child’s learning process is imperative for schools to teach effectively, as well as meeting key Oftsed requirements laid out in their inspection framework. Parental engagement is not only useful for learning but is greatly


beneficial in supporting good behaviour and values. Attendance and absenteeism, which are closely tied to attainment according to DfE data, have been shown to be improved by schools and parents partnering in rewarding attendance and increasing communication about expectations of attendance. The UK’s Families and Schools Together programme involved community


outreach and a training programme for parents to build on their relationships with their children and the school, resulting improved family functioning and reduced emotional and behavioural difficulties in the classroom.


How to improve parental engagement? Understanding why parental engagement is of such key importance in education is just part of the story, identifying how to improve engagement is a pivotal point in fostering positive behaviours in parents and pupils which result in stronger attainment.


• Give parents the tools required to support home-learning – Parents know their own children better than anyone else, they’re the experts in this field but they are not necessarily experts in grammar, maths or coding. Teachers can provide specific advice to parents on topics, links to online resources, conversational prompts or lists of keywords to use in discussions at home.


• Respond to parents’ needs – Address the barriers that parents may find to engagement, such as time, costs, travel, language, levels of literacy/numeracy and confidence, and make every effort to work with them to make parents feel included in their child’s education.


• Hands-on activities – Organise workshops, school trips and classes to directly involve parents in school events.


• Make communication easy – If the task of maintaining communication from schools to parents is seen as an added challenge to busy school staff then this will limit the adoption of a parental engagement strategy. Work communication into the daily routine.


• Keep communication two-way – Close collaboration between schools and parents is an effective way of ensuring pupils understand how to achieve their aspirations by identifying barriers to attainment and working together to overcome them.


Establishing strong and mutually beneficial relationships between


schools and parents has been shown to have substantial positive effects on children’s behaviour, attendance, self-control and attainment. Involving parents in their child’s education can be challenging for schools, but improving the links of communication can be made easier with new innovations in technology. Printed letters home and long phone calls take up time and resources, while powerful software such as our new School App makes communication fast, simple and effective.


uwww.neweraed.co.uk 8 www.education-today.co.uk


The importance of providing


software and a service Edtech is one of the greatest additions to schooling in recent history. It’s opened up a wealth of opportunities for students and teachers alike. Providing them with tools previously unheard of that allow them to hone their skill set and achieve better outcomes. The introduction of new software into schools has meant that we are able to streamline processes,


so they can become more efficient, and enables us to find solutions to the issues we have faced for years, ultimately improving outcomes and raising standards. It has opened up the doors for hundreds of companies, mine


included. I was able to create Show My Homework and provide an answer to the age-old homework issues encountered by teachers, students and parents, which had long been overlooked in the edtech realm with a single solution. However, what I have learnt from my time as both a teacher and a


CEO is that no matter how profound or ground-breaking your product is, it is only ever as effective as the service that is offered alongside it. Too often is software pushed into schools that promises to deliver outstanding results, but not enough support is provided to ensure uptake of the software is high enough to ensure maximum impact. Executing on and delivering your software is what the success of your company boils down to. So despite most software companies following the service model of


Software as a Service, in order to fully relate to the needs of your customers and delivering on the product you have delivered, you should be providing your customers with software and a service. When either looking to implement a piece of software in your school or when developing your own roll-out process, there are three things that need to be considered:


• Training Regardless of how easy you find your own software, or the fact we live in a computer literate world, people aren’t going to take to a product they don’t know how to use. This is why proper training on how to use a new product is paramount. If users feel comfortable with the software, and understand its functionality, the more likely they are to use it and maintain upkeep.


• Support Providing first class support is fundamental in ensuring that you keep users both happy and able to access their software. When looking at support provided by companies, take into consideration their operating hours and who support is available to. As we’re dealing with homework, we work with all stakeholders involved in the process; students, parents and teachers. It was important to me that we could provide support to every single one of them. These are factors that should be considered when looking at the support package provided with your licence type.


• Empathy We pride ourselves not only on the support and training that we offer, but our ability to empathise with our users, and that’s not just with our Trainers and Support Team, this message is cascaded throughout our entire company so we are continually meeting the needs of the people we are servicing. Ensuring that the people on the other end of the phone genuinely care about their needs can help to build a strong and meaningful relationship between you both.


uwww.showmyhomework.co.uk October 2016


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