Parents as Partners in Early Learning (PPEL) project

Date of issue: June 2007

Audience: Parents, LA advisors, Key Stage 1 teachers, heads and deputies, Foundation Stage practitioners

Parental involvement – a snapshot of policy and practice

The Parents as Partners in Early Learning (PPEL) project began in October 2006. The PPEL project team undertook to review current provision with an initial baseline audit of policy and practice across 150 LAs in England. As part of the audit process, members of the team also undertook desktop research by sampling publicly available LA materials. In a small number of priority authorities more detailed discussions took place with parents, officers and practitioners.

The final audit report Parental involvement – a snapshot of policy and practice (link opens in new window) represents a snapshot of policy, strategy and practice in English LAs summarising key aspects of the information that emerged from the baseline audit.

The report is organised into three main summary sections with three appendices:

• barriers to parental involvement
• policy
• practice
• appendix 1 – report on an audit of existing materials, projects, programmes and research relating to parental involvement in early years settings
• appendix 2 – report on an audit of programmes focused on parental involvement in the development of their children's personal, social and emotional development and literacy skills
• appendix 3 – examples of LA programmes.

The report contains some of these key messages:

• Most LA Children and Young People Plans (CYPPs) stress the importance of establishing effective partnerships with parents and exemplify ways in which the views of parents had been sought and built into the planning process. Most plans articulate broad intentions but are less clear about what this means in practice.
• There is now an increasing recognition at LA level of the importance of focusing on outcomes for children, and that the outcomes data they hold for children can be used to evaluate the impact of parent programmes on children's early learning.
• A number of authorities are now establishing parenting networks as a means of disseminating effective practice and developing the skills of practitioners in working with parents. Discussions with officers and practitioners during the audit indicated a real enthusiasm in many areas for developing sustainable practitioner networks across and between authorities.
• There is a need for greater precision and clarity in the definitions of 'parental support', 'parental engagement' and 'parental involvement' as a part of strategy development.
• There is a wide range of programmes on offer across authorities focused on parenting skills, family learning and parental engagement and involvement in children's learning. However audit findings suggest that many of these programmes have been developed in response to localised initiatives rather than in response to coherent authority-wide strategies on parental involvement.