Parental Engagement

The COVID-19 pandemic caused significant disruptions to schools around the world, impacting learning  for more than 1.5 billion students. One unexpected result of the pandemic is a growing connection between parents and schools. And that deeper understanding on both sides has been a huge benefit to young learners. Strong and equal partnerships between parents and schools is essential for student success.

After exploring nearly 200 different parental engagement efforts in 49 countries, the resulting list includes a wide range of approaches -- from educational playgroups and programs celebrating language diversity to community-based parent support groups and a program that promotes healthy child-parent attachment.

In February of 2021 HundrED launched a call for solutions working to foster a deeper connection between schools and families. This initiative was developed as part of the global Parents as Allies research initiative, which focuses on how the partnerships between schools and parents around the world are functioning and how innovations popping up in one part of the world can be adapted to support students elsewhere.

Parents as Allies brings together four organizations — the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution, the Teachers Guild x School Retool team at the groundbreaking design firm IDEO, the Pittsburgh-based, family-focused media outlet Kidsburgh, and HundrED. As promising new strategies crop up, these ideas are synthesized and shared in reports like the HundrED Spotlight, in order to help build stronger school-family and teacher-parent partnerships worldwide.

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