FAMILY SCHOOL AND COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIP BUREAU

What's in it For You?

The Bureau has been established to build bridges between families, communities and schools. It will do this through on-the-ground research, analysing and promoting those schools and communities that are making family school partnerships work.

The Bureau will bring parent insights into education research and policy. We will work closely and respectfully with other key stakeholders such as teachers. Some of the Bureau’s goals are to help make cultural changes and therefore are aspirational and long term. Other benefits will be direct and almost immediate.

For Principals

• The Bureau will look at examples of schools where there are good models of family school partnerships. That information will be practical and be presented in a way that a busy principal can easily access and modify to suit your needs.
• The Bureau can find examples of good practice from other parts of Australia or in other sectors; many principals, whose role is ever more demanding, just do not have the time or resources to seek out those examples.
• The Bureau will specifically look at ways to bring disengaged parents into a positive relationship with schools. This goal is based on the notion that parents can engage with schools at different levels and in different ways.
• The Bureau will look at major policy initiatives that will help overcome parental reluctance to engage with schools. These include the new Victorian policy of designing schools in close proximity to other services such as child health clinics, community centres and sports venues so that connections can be made that ease reluctant parents into the school environment or help the school to reach out.
• The building of positive family school partnerships can often be an investment in better behaviour management and slightly easier student-parent-teacher relationships.
• The increase in the pool of engaged parents is a valuable asset that helps with governance and community support for the school.

For Teachers

• The Bureau will provide easily accessible material about how teachers can relate to parents.
• The Bureau will design professional development modules for teachers who did not have relating to parents in their pre-service training (and isn’t that almost all?)
• The Bureau will help parents understand and appreciate the vital role of teachers not only in the education of their students but in society at large.
• The Bureau will help to improve the way parents approach a school so that wherever possible the connection is positive not anxious, angry or hypercritical.
• The Bureau can help teachers to understand where parents are coming from and help teachers to make the parent-teacher relationship a positive one.
• The Bureau will examine good models around Australia that will help you improve the way you teach so that you are engaging all students; this may affect homework, use of technology, activity based learning, vocational and community based activities and other ways of building relevance into your teaching plans.

For Parents and Students

• You will feel more welcome in a school that wants and knows how to build family school partnerships.
• Your connection with the school can help your children feel that they are in a magic circle of people who care about them and jointly meet their needs.
• The Bureau will work with parent organisations in each state to help them provide advice to all parents about building positive relationships with their school.
• The Bureau will assist parents to be involved in the learning of their children; education is part of a continuum of learning that doesn’t stop at the school gate.
• The Bureau will look at ways to make the school genuinely part of your community so that you have ownership but you respect the role of teachers and principals.
• The Bureau will encourage better communication between schools, home and the community.