Teach-Primary-Issue-19.8

The author is a teacher in England. VO I C E S I recently heard a headteacher read out the latest pledge from Whitehall, that parents would be put “front and centre” of school life. The Education Secretary’s September pronouncement, trailed with a forthcoming white paper on parent engagement and complaints reform, sounded like the partnership we all say we want. By lunchtime, I was watching a parent hover in the foyer for a pre-arranged meeting about her son’s progress. She signed in, took a visitor badge, and waited while we hurried through other priorities. She was never invited backstage. Many educators see this gap between the pledge and the practice every day. Not for lack of goodwill, but because the system’s incentives make genuine engagement harder than it should be. Policy churn is part of the problem. In schools, we work through successive policies that do not have time to stick. Last year it was a ‘parent pledge’; this year it is ‘clear expectations’ and co-created ‘universal offers’ for parents. Ironically, the government scrapped mandatory home-school agreements in 2016 as ‘prescriptive’ red tape. Now the wheel has turned, and we’re asked to codify parent-school expectations again. Schools respond because accountability expects visible compliance. One headteacher told me, “We stage consultations and update our policies whenever ministers change course; it ticks the box, but everyone privately knows it is more theatre than transformation.” The incentive is to show we’re following the latest policy script, not rewriting the plot. Inspection evidence and legal risk push relationships to the background. It is safer to show a paper trail of ‘parental engagement’ than to engage in messy, nuanced human dialogue. The work becomes producing documents that satisfy frameworks rather than shifting power with families. Logos go on websites, banners take pride of place, certificates appear in newsletters, while parents still queue front-of-house. A pastoral lead told me they once “spent more time collating parent survey data for the school improvement plan than talking to parents in need”. Accreditation criteria often reward evidence submission and compliance with standards, not demonstrable parent influence on decisions. What does ‘parent-friendly’ mean if families cannot see where their voice changed a choice? We end up with what feels like an audience-only mindset. This is engagement on the school’s terms: controlled, formal, and often at arm’s length. School groups and trusts add distance, too. Decisions that used to be made in the playground or the local governors’ meeting now often sit at group headquarters, far from day-to-day school life. “Our trust holds ‘listening forums’ and talks about co-design, but the big decisions come pre-packaged from above,” said one parent governor I spoke to. “Consultation feels like an optics-led PR exercise.” Parents are invited to the table in theory, but in practice they are given a seat with no real power. Meanwhile, a complaints culture has taken hold that frames every difficult conversation as potentially adversarial. Many leaders report a spike in vexatious complaints, and in such an atmosphere schools go on the defensive. Instead of seeing concerned parents as partners, they become potential litigants to manage. I know colleagues who refuse to meet a parent alone, not out of hostility, but so that a witness is present. The result is a paradox: policies born of partnership are weighed down by accountability, caution, and sometimes fear, reducing genuine dialogue. The gap is systemic, not personal. Very few staff in schools intend to shut parents out. Parents, for their part, can sense when they are being placated rather than heard. Many teachers know this feeling too. At this point, I encourage introspection: if you’ve sat in the audience for decisions about your work, consider that parents are the audience to decisions about their child. Like you, they tire when consulted after the fact; when their notes rarely make the script. Where does that leave the latest white paper promise? The choice is clear. Change the incentives that turn policy into white noise, or watch another script read well and die on stage. What will you and your team change this term so parents see their voice shape a decision? TP If the government is serious about putting parents centre-stage, it needs to stop rewarding schools that simply tick the right boxes... Our anonymous educator gets something off their chest www.teachwire.net | 19