Read, Write, Count collaborative partnership to support family learning and parental engagement

During the 2019-20 academic year, the Read, Write, Count (RWC) Group sought and was awarded funding from the Scottish Government’s Small Project Fund: Parental Engagement – Equity and Equality to support its work. 

The funding underpinned the Group’s project to address inequalities by engaging with families who may not otherwise find it easy to engage with the Scottish Book Trust’s Read, Write, Count resources or with the school. It specifically targeted families learning English, those with Looked After Children, fathers, and other families identified as likely to benefit from a focussed interaction. 

Workshops for Primary 3 families 

The funding from the Small Project Fund enabled the City of Edinburgh Council Lifelong Learning service to employ a Family Learning Professional, Barbara Middleton, to develop and deliver a series of workshops for Primary 3 families in a range of settings, and to contribute to the evaluation and dissemination of findings as well as professional learning opportunities. In 2020, the settings included three primary schools and two community-based settings for families with English as an Additional Language, including a community centre and a library.  

Due to the pandemic, the work had to be moved online at short notice. Barbara created a four-week programme titled ‘Help Your Child to Learn’ which used short videos to support work with parents. 

Preliminary Evaluation 

A preliminary evaluation of the first year was carried out. There are two parts to the evaluation that have been partially completed: 

• self-evaluation using the PACS Toolkit and HGIOS 2.5 Family Learning 
• Mixed-methods evaluation by Edinburgh University. This draws on verbal and written feedback from parents and school staff, assessing impact using pre-and post-engagement questionnaires completed by participants (17 at least partially complete), and includes reflections from the project worker on lessons learnt.  

Caution had to be exercised in analysis of any changes between pre- and post-interventions as this period overlapped with the start of lockdown, when parents became responsible for home-schooling. Changes in reported frequency of activities (e.g. reading with child or visits to the library) cannot be attributed to the intervention. Likewise, changes in measures of confidence are difficult to interpret as involvement in home-schooling is likely to have had a greater impact than the intervention.   

We can be more confident in the questions relating to engagement with the RWC materials, which the lockdown would not necessarily have affected. 

Increased confidence and engagement with the RWC materials 

The largest reported change in all the measures was in confidence in using the materials in the RWC gifting bags with their children. The average increase was +2.25 (on a scale from 1 – ‘not very true of me’, to 10 – ‘very true of me’) on the statement: ‘I feel I can take ideas from the RWC resources and use them at home with my children’. 

Looking more closely at differences between native speakers (NS) and non-native speakers (NNS), all NS reporting a change (about half) reported a positive change, compared with NNS of whom half reported an increase and half a decrease. This needs to be explored further in interviews. 

Ten parents responded ‘none’ to the pre-test question ‘How often in the last week have you used the RWC materials with your child?’, five said ‘once’ and one reported 2 – 3 times. After the intervention only one parent reported ‘none’ for this question, with over half reporting 2 - 3 or 4 – 6 times. The most common post-test response was ‘2-3 times’. Only one parent, a native Arabic speaker, did not use the materials more after the intervention because of language difficulties.

Again, there were some differences between NS and NNS, with NNS more likely to report more frequent use after the intervention (all but the one parent mentioned above reported 2- 3 times or more). This compared with half of the NS who reported using the materials once a week after the intervention. 

Recommendations for boosting future engagement with the RWC gifting bags 

The low base-line use of the materials suggests that, for most parents, receiving the book gifting bags is not sufficient to prompt them to use them, but that the interactive workshops were successful in nudging parents to make the shift to engaging with the materials.  

The workshops offered suggested activities and also helped parents navigate the existing resources provided by SBT on their website. If this ‘nudge’ can be scaled up to reach more parents, our data suggests this will be effective in promoting parental engagement with the resources which SBT develop each year. 

Informal feedback from teachers 

Formal evaluation of the intervention with teachers was not planned, but the RWC group sought feedback informally.  

School staff commented on the added value of the interactive sessions to support families to make the most of this existing resource. For example, the deputy headteacher of a participating school commented that the programme had been a great success in terms of engaging families, but she felt that the video materials alone (despite their quality and energy) would not have had the same effect, and that it was the interactive sessions that had made the difference. She described the partnership between the school and Lifelong Learning as very positive and something the school would like to continue if possible. 

During the 2018-19 academic year, the Moray House RWC Group gathered data to better understand how pupils in upper primary classes feel about the links between home and school. 

Background: parental engagement during transitions 

Much of the literature on parental engagement focuses on early years and supporting transitions into primary school. We know that parental engagement is associated with learners’ success at school, and we also know that it is easier with parents of young children. 

With the Read Write, Count (RWC) initiative’s focus on parental engagement for families with children in P2 and P3, the Scottish Book Trust are now exploring ways to continue this support as children move into upper primary. 

Research informing the Read Write, Count programme development 

The Moray House RWC Group conducted research to inform the Read Write, Count programme’s development and the nature of the offer for upper primary-aged children.  

Questionnaire 

A questionnaire was designed and distributed through volunteer students on initial teacher education programmes who were on placement in upper primary classes. A total of 904 responses were returned from schools in five different local authority areas. 

Questionnaire findings 

Overall findings focused on the change in what pupils want from home-school relationships, which has previously been observed in pupils in secondary school but is already evident in P6 and P7 pupils. While there is no increase in embarrassment associated with parents being involved in school activities, there is a preference for “indirect” engagement, rather than direct support. 

The pupils at all stages reported wanting more help from their parents with their writing than with reading. 

Further research: systematised scoping reviews 

In addition to this questionnaire, two masters students carried out research on topics identified as of interest by the collaborative RWC Group. Both research projects were systematised scoping reviews: 

• Parents supporting children with EAL reading in the home setting by Dongling Li 
• Effectiveness of Digital Tools to Support Pupils’ Reading in Secondary School – A Systematised Review by Danlei Chen 

Knowledge exchange 

The findings from both studies were shared with the City of Edinburgh local authority. Research from the second study by Danlei Chen was published in the International Journal of Mobile and Blended Learning. 

Members of the collaborative RWC Group also shared findings when presenting on “Collaborating for Impact” at the Third Sector Research Forum, Edinburgh, in October 2019. The presentation focused on the successful collaboration between Moray House staff and students, City of Edinburgh and the Scottish Book Trust, including: 

• students’ research highlighting the lack of teacher confidence in teaching of writing, which was addressed through CPD 
• working with SBT and Family Learning on RWC allowed CEC to provide better training for schools 
• research on Family Learning support was shared with the Quality Improvement Officer writing the strategy paper on parental engagement 
• a survey on pupils’ views on parental involvement in schools 

During the 2017-18 academic year, masters students conducted research by working with City of Edinburgh colleagues and helping them generate data on issues such as literacy and parental engagement that the service  would find useful. 

Collaborative research 

These research projects formed the students’ masters dissertations. The Local Authority received copies of all the final dissertations along with an Executive Summary. 

The topics explored included the following:  

• The Transferability of Writing of Secondary School Pupils across Disciplines in Scotland by Catherine Geng 
• Parents’ and Schools’ Experiences of Parental Engagement for Children with Profound and Complex Additional Support Needs by Yuanyi Lu 
• Early career (EC) primary teachers’ confidence in teaching writing by Yiwen Xu 
• Too Young to Write? A Case Study of Teachers’ and Parents’ Perspectives in One Primary School in Edinburgh by Xinru Yu 
• Parental engagement of Chinese parents in Scottish educational setting by Xin Chen 
• Cultural Differences in Parental Engagement by Nan Yang 
• Preparing Parents for School by Yunqing Kang 
• Supporting Children’s Schooling as a Non-Native Speaker by Erin Cahill and Mengyan Lin 
• What Do We Know about Secondary School Libraries? by Chris Davies 
• Evaluation of ‘Talk for Writing’ by Linxi Tang  

During the 2016-2017 academic year, the Read, Write Count (RWC) projects aimed to:  

• support parental engagement under the Family Learning umbrella (currently supported by Community Learning and Development Family Learning) 
• enable trainee teachers to develop their skills/practice around parental engagement with children’s learning 

Projects 

Pre-service teachers were involved in two related activities. The first group, consisting of eight students, worked alongside Family Learning workers with families of pupils in schools. The second group conducted research on the effectiveness of the Moray House RWC initiative as their final year project for the BEd (Primary Education) programme. 

Findings 

Findings from research conducted by BEd (Primary Education) students Robyn Ivory, Kerriann Kerr, Anni MacKay, Anna Stembridge, Hollie Strang included: 

• RWC’s potential is currently under-exploited. Schools in affluent areas tend not to use it. Not all teachers know about the depth of resources on offer from the Scottish Book Trust. 
• there is a perceived need for additional support to make the RWC resources and related activities accessible to bilingual or multilingual families 
• student teachers often lack confidence in parental engagement and feel under-prepared for this aspect of their practice 
• There are different understandings of parental engagement amongst teachers. While some asset-based approaches were identified, deficit-based approaches persist in some places. 

Knowledge exchange 

Findings from the research projects were disseminated at a half-day seminar for practitioners and policymakers. 

View the seminar slides

Feedback about the initial Read, Write, Count resources suggested that activity events for parents and children that cover how the resources could be used might be helpful. Subsequently, such activity events were held to promote engagement with a variety of parent groups, including a dads’ group. 

All students on initial teacher education programmes at Moray House School of Education and Sport were invited to participate in an evening session on using RWC materials to support parental engagement. This session was delivered by the School and City of Edinburgh staff. Feedback was very positive and some student teachers immediately began implementing the ideas during their school placements. 

A lecture on family learning approaches looking at both theory and practice was devised and offered to initial teacher education students.