Dear Parents and Carers,

At the ACT Catholic Primary School’s Principal Meeting last week there was much discussion about parent engagement and creating a new understanding of what that looks like in a primary school’s context, with the current Facebook post that is doing the rounds being shared;

For me this quote highlights the statistic that children spend only 15% of their time at school and how vital the relationship between home and school is. Debbie Pushor, Professor of Education at the University of Saskatchewan and a leading expert in the area, states ‘how it’s done doesn’t matter, it’s the sense of the commitment to each other, then the rest will come’. For so long in schools we have been good at parent involvement, yet there is a distinct difference between engagement and involvement. The best example of the difference is the idea that if a year 7 student can do the job, that’s involvement, whilst anything that involves a child’s education and learning is engagement.

At St Benedict’s we do want to engage parents and we have the best intentions, but realistically it can sometimes get lost. We are always looking for new ways to increase parent engagement, with some of the most recent ways being the change to the reporting and feedback process and the move to Three Way Conferences and Learning Showcases. The other initiative we have recently tried is the introduction of the Catholic Schools Week Family Breakfast. We are aware that majority of our parents work and are often unable to attend school events during the day, so hoped that a breakfast would be another way for parents to be engaged, meet with teachers, other families and visit classrooms. This is an initiative we would like to see continue in the future. If there are other ways you think we can engage parents further, please feel free to email me rachel.smith@cg.catholic.edu.au

I will finish with the words of Pope Francis ‘education is a family matter, and rather than contradicting one another, parents and teachers must collaborate openly and constructively to form children in core values which enable them to face modern challenges’.

Thank you for your ongoing care and partnership in your child’s learning.

God bless

Rachel Smith
Principal