DETERMINED TO SUCCEED
ENTERPRISE IN EDUCATION
STRATEGIES FOR ENGAGING PARENTS AND CARERS
This document is designed to give schools examples of a variety of
approaches in which they can engage parents and carers in Enterprise in
Education and at the same time, gaining their support and commitment to
this.
Parents are key partners in young people’s learning. Involvement of
parents as individuals, and through new parental forums being set up and
associations of parents and teachers can enrich and enhance every aspect
of the curriculum. The home environment is strongly influential on young
people’s attitudes to education generally and to their post school choices.
Therefore two-way partnership between school and parents can assist
young people in making the right choices. Parents can provide an
inexhaustible resource for every school because of their experiences as
employees, employers, entrepreneurs and professionals. These skills can
be used to enhance the delivery of our curriculum and bring in relevance
to their learning.
This is not a prescriptive list and I am in no way advocating these
methods. This should be used as guidance and strategies can be tailored
to meet the needs of your school community. What we are striving to do
is to gain support of our parents in delivering real and relevant lessons to
our young people.
What are we doing at authority level?
As part of the implementation plan, we will be raising awareness with
parents and carers in the following ways:
 Making links to enterprise through other initiatives such as A
Curriculum for Excellence and Assessment is for Learning
 Cascading information to parents through the enterprise blog and
asking parents to contribute
 Offering information sessions to parental forum groups and PTA’s
 Inviting parents and carers to all enterprise events being held
across the authority
What can schools do?
When looking at parental engagement I have split this into two sections.
 Awareness Raising
 Gaining Support
All schools have excellent strategies in place for raising awareness and
these are shared in this document. It is important that schools look to
develop this further in order to gain the support of their parents in
helping deliver Enterprise in Education.
1. Awareness Raising
There are a number of methods currently being used in order to raise
awareness with parents and carers across our schools. You will have
received a copy of the good practice guide at the beginning of Session
2006/07 and this should add to the many ideas contained in this
document.
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Newsletter items
Leaflets indicating what parents can do at home.
Showcase events
Evidence walls in schools showing examples of children’s work
Cluster news releases
Enterprise open days – children and parents working together to
experience techniques for themselves
Making a different focus for each year group across the secondary
school – Enterprising Teaching and Learning in S1, Pre vocational
work in S2, Careers Planning in S3, etc.
Web sites and blogs
2. Gaining Support
There are a number of ways in which schools could try and gain the
support of parents. The most obvious is to tap into their skills within the
workforce and use these as a way of making learning more relevant to the
young people in our schools. This list gives some indication of different
ways to get parents supporting enterprise and helping them to develop a
can do will do approach for our young people.
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Auditing parents understanding and support through questionnaires
Giving parents a voice through an enterprise blog for the school.
Organise a parental support database for staff to access so they
can see skills on offer and use these accordingly in their classes.
Using parents to supplement and establish additional business links
Using skills to support additional extra curricular activities
Enterprise challenges – giving set challenges as homework for
parents to work in partnership with their children. These could be
held after a workshop in school to show techniques involved.
Enterprise workshops linked to various curriculum areas – during
curriculum evenings discuss how enterprising teaching and learning
is used to enhance the subject area.
Involving parents in the design and implementation of the school’s
homework policy looking at enterprising approaches in the home.
Using parental forums as a way of driving enterprise agenda
Holding regular workshops across the school that target a
different year group and looks specifically at the skills we are
trying to develop.
Let pupils sell ideas by giving personal invitations from them to
their parents and carers
Set up a parental involvement challenge fund awarding funding to
staff who come up with original ideas
Speed networking event with parents and children
The best way of making an impact on our parents is to use the children
themselves to get the message across. Parents love to hear success
stories straight from the children and are more likely to engage if our
young people show them the benefits.
Scott Lavery
Enterprise in Education Officer
March 2007