Parents and Schools: The Partnership Most Schools Pretend to Have

What it is not

Three minutes per child once a term, with twenty-eight parents queueing behind, is not a partnership. It is a performance of one. Everyone leaves frustrated and nothing changes.

What it could be

A real partnership has three properties. Parents are contacted before the report card, not by it. Bad news arrives by phone, not by email. The school's first instinct when a child struggles is to ring home for context, not to assume the home is the problem.

Where to start

Pick one cohort. Phone every parent in the first three weeks of term, for five minutes, with no concern to raise. Just hello. Watch what happens to the rest of the year.