Other resources
Find some other resources to help families engage with maths together.
How to encourage parental engagement
Engaging parents and carers with their children’s education leads to raised attainment at school. It can also improve children’s behaviour and school attendance.
In primary schools, family influences have a bigger impact than school on children’s attainment. And the research shows that children are more motivated to learn about maths when their parents talk with them about the numeracy in everyday life.
So engaging families in their children’s maths learning can reap big rewards.
Find out more about National Numeracy’s Schools & Families programme for primary schools
Key recommendations for schools
- Make sure that parents, carers and staff know how important parental input is. It can make a big difference to children’s achievement.
- Make parental engagement a target for staff. Everyone has to be on board for it to work.
- Offer clear information and advice for parents, in different languages where needed. Use technology to reach parents.
- Recognise that many parents and carers will be anxious about maths. Support them to build their confidence with resources such as the National Numeracy Challenge.
- Let parents know about their child’s successes as well as any problems, so that they don’t associate school contact with bad news.
- Make sure that the school promotes positive attitudes to maths for families. For example, maths displays around the school, maths stories or maths days.
- Be approachable! Listen to parents and share things with them in a friendly, supportive way.
Use National Numeracy’s parental engagement audit tool to start planning your school’s approach.
Reaching all families
“Parents who are viewed as ‘hard to reach’ often see the school as ‘hard to reach’.” – Engaging Parents in Raising Achievement: Do Parents Know They Matter?, Professor Alma Harris and Dr Janet Goodall, 2007
- Make your school a safe and inviting place. For instance, training reception staff in diversity and inclusion can be a simple way of making more families feel welcome.
- Ask families what they want. How do they like to be communicated with? What times and days are best for them to come into school? Is there any support the school can offer them with literacy, IT skills or CV writing, for example?
- Offer family learning provision – support parents and children together.
- Try to involve fathers and other family members as well as mothers.
- Make connections with local organisations to reach families who have more complex needs.
- Use volunteers of different genders and from different backgrounds who parents may feel more comfortable engaging with. Take a look at our Parent Champions tips below for more ideas.
- Don’t give up! With the right support in place, any family can engage.
Schools & Families Programme
National Numeracy works with primary schools across the UK to support families, so that pupils feel more positive about maths, and have greater awareness of the value of value of numeracy.
We also work with schools to increase parents’, carers’ and school staff’s own confidence with numbers, aiming to establish lasting approaches and strategies which can continue in the years following the programme.
Case study: Becoming Numerate in Hackney
This guide contains examples of good practice from National Numeracy's work on a project with Hackney primary schools, including parental engagement ideas.
Maths on Toast
Maths on Toast is a charity that runs community events where maths is family fun.
Oxford School Improvement
The 'Parental Engagement - How to make a real difference' report from Oxford School Improvement includes some really useful recommendations for schools looking to improve parental engagement.
Learning With Parents
This charity offers resources and videos for primary schools, explaining to parents how maths is taught at school, available on a yearly subscription.
Tapestry
Tapestry is a paid for online learning journal for EYFS settings that parents and teachers use together.
School Home Support
School Home Support offers a combination of specialist support and emotional and practical advice to vulnerable children and young people, working with them and their families to help overcome the barriers that are preventing them from learning.
Report: How to involve hard to reach parents
This report provides a crucial insight into the problems faced by some parents, and gives strategies to help schools improve the relationship.
Guardian article: translating maths for ESL students
This article looks at one primary school's initiative to translate maths for children and parents who have English as an additional language.
Oxford University Press video: Jean Gross on reaching families
In this video, the education expert Jean Gross discusses how a school can reach families who it has previously struggled to engage.
Schools Improvement: Janet Goodall
This article by parental engagement expert Janet Goodall explores why parental engagement matters and what schools can do to encourage it.
Parents as partners
The 'Parents as partners in their children's learning' guide offers practical ideas and checklists for schools to support partnership with parents in all aspects of children's learning.
