Parental Engagement

Jim Knight, Minister of State for Schools and Learners, announced at the BETT Show in January 2008

“taking important steps to use technology to bring all parents even more into the picture”.

As a result, every school in England is now expected to provide secure, online access for parents to support their children’s progress – all secondary schools by September 2010 and all primary schools by 2012.

Gatehouse Partnership initially became involved in this initiative in Spring 2008 when Gale helped write materials for the Framework that, like the ICT Mark SRF, will support schools and enable them to benchmark their progress. During the Summer of 2008, Anthony and Gale were asked by Becta to write Case Studies on five primary and special schools wherein Parental Engagement was already well under way, some of which are to be published on the Becta web site.

Gatehouse was subsequently successful in tendering for the specific contract to extend this process during the Autumn term 2008 and Anthony and Gale joined a small group of half a dozen Evidence Gatherers across England. They had the remit to follow two schools each throughout three months and write a ‘journey’ report as well as to continue writing Case Studies on individual primary and special schools: they were also asked to re-write Case Studies on eight Secondary schools that were initially visited earlier in the year. Anthony was involved in Spring 2010 in writing a booklet for all Special school extolling the value of using the Self-Review Framework for benchmarking ICT progress.

This is a huge, ongoing task but complements the work already being undertaken within the ICT Mark process and enhances the company’s national credibility and expertise in supporting ICT in schools. Given that primary schools have another year to achieve the goals set above, Gatehouse will continue to be instrumental in delivering this important agenda.

If you are interested in learning more about this process, whether as a school or as an individual, then please get in contact with us and we will be pleased to help.