Bringing it all Back Home – Reviving and Unifying the Family Learning and Parental Engagement Agendas is written by Sam Freedman, senior fellow at the Institute for Government and former senior policy adviser at the Department for Education.
In the paper, Sam Freedman highlights the potential impact of parental engagement and family learning interventions on pupils’ attainment as well as other critical issues, including mental health, children’s social care and pre-school education. His paper argues that the new government has an opportunity to bring together different streams of work which aim to support children and families in England into a coherent strategy. These include pre-existing schemes and new initiatives, such as the Parent Pledge, family hubs and the Multiply programme.
The paper covers:
- the history of policy development in family learning and parental engagement in England, and post-2010 in Scotland and Wales as their systems have diverged.
- the current government's policy agenda for England showing the areas in which families policy is reemerging and forms in which it is doing so
- how family learning and parental engagement can be unified within a single policy approach in England
- recommendations of how these different strands can be brought together into a clearer and more coherent statement starting with a single Children and Families strategy
Read the paper and Sam Freedman's seven recommendations.
Released: 27 September 2022