Building Relationships with Parents in Challenging Circumstances – A thought piece by Rob Skelton, Headteacher at North Star 265° ALP

I have been minded for a while to write about how we can foster good relationships when things can be challenging in the school environment. To give a bit of context to this, I am a Headteacher of an Alternative Provision School (AP) in a large city environment. Before this I was a senior leader in an alternative provision school in a large mixed local authority.

Is it Challenging?

I often wonder how challenging our environment is in AP compared to mainstream schools. What is true is that we take children from schools where they have been showing problematic behaviour and we place them all together in what can be one big melting pot. However, another truth is that we are often removing them from the contexts and the situations that they were finding difficult.

Our environment removes the large groups which our children can find difficult. Peer relationships are often one of the key triggers for children who attend AP. Often they have not developed the social skills to manage peer relationships. They can also lack the ability to self-regulate and manage emotions when things become challenging with peers.

Equally, we are also taking children away from tricky relationships with adults in whom they may have lost trust. The staff at an AP play a key adult role, finding out about the child, their strengths and difficulties. They spend time building trust and have training in emotion coaching and trauma informed approaches to be able to support children.

For parents though, the move to AP can be a massive shift. They have also been experiencing the same challenges. I do not think we can underestimate the impact on parents, carers and families of a child having a challenging time in school. Constant phone calls (rarely positive), increasing suspensions and tense relationships with school leaders all impact on parents. Often, when parents reach AP their relationship with education and schools has been damaged, if not broken. They may also have had a poor experience of education themselves. Mending that relationship is a key role of AP, one that can be challenging but is of prime importance if a child is to be successful in the future.

Is it getting worse?

There has always been challenging behaviour in schools, but it is certainly now a more prominent issue. A report in TES in March this year suggests that poor pupil behaviour is now a bigger concern for primary school teachers than workload. In the same article it is reported that exclusion and suspension rates have risen since the pandemic, and increased by a third in the autumn term of 2023-24.

The social, emotional and mental health (SEMH) needs of pupils is one of the key reasons for the increase in EHCPs. When children are not having their SEMH needs met because of the funding constraints in schools or at local authority level, their behaviour can often become challenging. It’s well known that parents’ relationships with schools breaks down in these situations and there has been an increase in poor attendance and parents choosing electively to home educate as a result.

Also this month in TES, an academy trust has claimed that the lack of appropriate AP provision is a barrier to reducing suspensions. There is a soaring demand for places and an increasing struggle to return pupils to mainstream schools. This has resulted in AP leaders reporting that their schools are full by Christmas. As a parent, what do you do in February when your child’s school is reporting challenging behaviour and no solution?

It can be just as difficult for teaching staff in these challenging situations. The NAHT report that over 80% of school leaders say they have been abused by parents in the past year. Of those, 1 in 10 suffered physical violence. It’s obvious that no-one should have to suffer abuse at work. I believe that one of the reasons for this is that parents are becoming so frustrated with the situations they find themselves in. We must be clear though; abuse is not acceptable and will be tackled.

Having been in a senior leadership role in AP for some years I have benefitted from having the opportunity to visit lots of mainstream schools, observe pupils in their settings and meet with parents when pupils have been finding school difficult. Being an independent observer, I have managed to see some of the positive engagements that schools can have with parents, and some of those which can really damage relationships. Unfortunately, these negative interactions can impact relationships to breaking point. Trust is lost and the idea of working together to support a pupil flies out the window.

Values matter

It is in these situations, dealing with parents when they are feeling a multitude of emotions (fear, defensiveness, anger, vulnerability) that our values will come through.

Our Trust values are –

Navigating Success Together with Ambition and Relevance.

Our values flow through all that we do in school, supporting the development of a positive culture and ethos, underpinning our policies, procedures and approach and extending beyond this to the way in which we interact with parents, carers and the whole school community. So, what do they mean in relation to parents? Everything really. When parents arrive with us, one of my first messages to them is that this may be a challenging journey, but that we will navigate it together as a team. They often feel judged and so I tell them that if they are finding their child’s behaviour at home challenging, it is no surprise as school staff have been finding that too. It can be quite disarming for a parent to hear. Instead of the message being “Why is your child so challenging?”, the message is “We are all finding this challenging. Let’s navigate through it together.”

Another message I give at the beginning is that we will be celebrating success. Parents are used to being given the message that we will be in touch if there are behavioural issues, and I am always clear with parents that we will do that, but they are often surprised by all the positivity in the messages that they receive. Pupils often reach us when their self-esteem has suffered, they have poor self-image and do not believe they can be successful. My message to parents is that we will celebrate the small successes every day. The feedback from parents when they begin to see raffle tickets for sitting well, attendance certificates for weekly attendance, ‘Wow’ work being celebrated every week, contact from our staff daily and weekly with positive messages, is amazing. Better still is the effect it has on pupils’ self-esteem, self-image, confidence and attitude to school.

Ambition is often where things can become complicated for parents. For many reasons, when children display difficult behaviour or are at risk of exclusion the challenge they get academically is often reduced and the ambition around what they can achieve is often downplayed. This leads to a downward spiral and children’s confidence really suffers.

At our school we are ambitious for our children. One of the key messages I give to children is that we will challenge them. Parents can often be wary of this as they feel that when demands are made on their child, their behaviour escalates. We address this in several ways. Firstly, we challenge children on the behaviour they have been demonstrating in their mainstream schools. I make it clear that we cannot accept behaviours such as shouting out in class or throwing items, as our aim for pupils is always to return to mainstream settings.

Next, we encourage parents to be the change that their child needs. When parents have experienced complex behaviour over a number of years, they can come to accept that behaviour. Often parents apologise for children’s behaviour or try to excuse it. Of course, I am not saying that apologies are not needed, but we do need to help children to understand that they are responsible for their own behaviour. We help parents to be ambitious for what their child can achieve. This can be a long road but is the most important interaction we have with parents.

I think one of the nicest things to hear from parents is that they feel valued, equal and listened to. One thing we have to be very clear about is that we are partners with parents in helping their child in education and parents will have a far bigger influence than we will. As Dame Rachel de Souza says “children spend six hours each day in school, the rest of the time they spend at home. This means that parents are vital partners in a child’s education.”

This is evidence backed. The Education Endowment Foundation, in the Teaching and Learning Toolkit, finds that engaging parents in education supports pupils to make on average 4 months academic progress.

Into practice

There is a popular idiom – “It’s better to swallow the frog”. If there is an issue it is better to address it head on. Having those difficult conversations can be unpalatable, but to build strong relationships with parents we have to address underlying issues.

Parents are often surprised when they come to my school and find that we deal with attendance issues forcefully. Unfortunately, we often find that schools have not always done so in challenging circumstances. The message to parents is always clear: we can only work on behaviour if children are in school. Children manage routine better when parents can support by getting their child to school on time.

Another obstacle that schools face is that parents can often “sound off” on social media. This can be difficult to challenge. There is no silver bullet. The answer to this lies in lots of small steps. It is of fundamental importance to be clear with parents and to have open and honest communication. One of my mantras with parents is that we welcome challenge. It is part of our home school agreement with families that we expect them to raise concerns. In every meeting I have I ask parents to raise concerns no matter how small, because a problem raised on a Monday is often solvable, but often more complex by Friday afternoon when it has been lingering all week.

My staff are always completely open with parents. This includes the good, the bad and the ugly. In order to treat parents as partners we have to be clear that they have an absolute right to know everything to do with their child. Your word is your bond and we can only build strong relationships if parents know you will be completely honest. I empower all my staff to be able to share all information with parents.

I have sat through some difficult meetings in schools where parents have been upset by mixed or unclear messaging. A child has hurt his foot and staff have given different accounts. In one he kicked a window intentionally. Another account says he was doing some exercises to relieve his dysregulation and kicked the window by accident. The impact of this is that the parent is unclear about this communication and loses faith in their ability to trust any other information from school.

Naturally, when parents come to our school they will often already have had a poor experience of education. Even if a school has managed a challenging situation well, the fact that a child is at risk of exclusion or has been excluded is difficult for parents to understand and process. My staff listen to it all, understanding a need for parents to express the past hurts that they and their child have experienced. We are happy to talk through parents’ experiences. This helps them to feel listened to, but it equally helps us to understand where parents are coming from, what experiences and traumas they have had.

Part of this is to understand that just as children communicate through their behaviour, so do our parents. Sometimes, when a parent comes in to us agitated and upset we have to work hard to identify the issue and what it is that they are trying to communicate. Understanding behaviour as communication in parents can help us to identify anxieties, concerns and unmet needs. Once we know that, it is a lot easier to proceed and build a positive relationship.

Lastly, we have to be there for the long haul. Relationships will ebb and flow. The important thing is that over time our parents learn to trust us, work together with us and build that strong relationship together. It is of critical importance, as our main aim is to return children to mainstream school. That transition can only be successful with a really strong team behind a child, which involves parents as core partners.

Helpful Sources

Help for early years providers: Working in partnership with parents and carers

Engaging parents and families

Communicate effectively with families | EEF

REVIEW OF BEST PRACTICE IN PARENTAL ENGAGEMENT

Engaging parents in education | Children’s Commissioner for England

Parental engagement | EEF