Parent Partnership in the Primary School: A practical guide for school leaders and other key staff

Parent partnership is a powerful tool in maximising children’s outcomes in the primary school. Parent Partnership in the Primary School will enable you to evaluate your current practice in this crucial area of school life and provides practical, easy-to-follow steps to plan and deliver improvements successfully. The book explores five key principles for leaders, managers, teachers, support staff, volunteers and governors to focus on in their drive to engage all parents and carers as genuine partners in their child’s learning.

Pulling together recommendations from a wide range of international sources, this book builds upon twenty years of research evidence highlighting the importance of parent involvement and engagement. Bishop also brings his own broad experiences from a thirty-two-year career in primary education, as a teacher, school leader, consultant and trainer, to bear on the many challenges facing schools as they seek to welcome, encourage, inform and support those whose children they educate.

Detailed case studies from six carefully selected schools, with which Bishop has worked as a consultant, exemplify some of the most successful techniques and programmes currently in use to facilitate parent partnership. Suggestions for further reading are included, and for leaders and managers there is an easy-to-use audit tool to support their strategic thinking and school improvement activity.