Parents and carers are key influencers on their child’s choices and career decisions and therefore are crucial players in shaping what their best next step might be. Hard evidence tells us that parent and carer engagement leads to better educational outcomes.
In recent national research (Careers and Enterprise Company), 67 per cent of Career Leaders told us they wanted to see parental engagement in careers approached strategically and inclusively across the whole school or college.
Our approach to parent and carer engagement
In 2023 the Careers Hub established a task & finish group to explore how parent and carer engagement in relation to careers education could be improved.
As parents and carers are one of the biggest influencers on students’ decisions, it was agreed that the outcomes of this task and finish group should be a priority in the academic year 2023/24.
Members of the group identified 3 groups of parents that have informed our action plan:
- Group One: Highly engaged in child’s education – possibly educated to degree level themselves and may need to dispel some myths around alternative pathways post 16.
- Group Two: Moderately Engaged in child’s education – isn’t fully aware of careers education programme and the wide variety of post 16 options but willing to do the right thing if they have the knowledge.
- Group Three: Disengaged in child’s education – doesn’t engage in extra-curricular meeting/ events. Lack of awareness and/or skills to support child’s career choices.
The success of our parent and carer engagement strategy will rely on the engagement of the following stakeholders on a continuous basis:
- Schools and Colleges
- Young People
- Cornerstone Employer Group
- Employers
- Employer Representative Bodies
- Wider stakeholder groups including Careers Providers, Social Value Managers, the Local Councils and Stakeholders working with families.
School and College Support
The Careers Hub team will continue to work closely with Career Leaders in our 53 Institutions to help them develop their parent and carer engagement strategy.
This will include:
- Understanding who in the school/college is responsible for the overall parent and carers engagement strategy and what that looks like;
- Understanding how visible the careers education programme is to parents and carers who want to engage;
- Establish if career conversations are currently included in the parental engagement strategy;
- If careers is included, evaluate the engagement levels; if not, agree how careers can be included in the school/college parental engagement strategy;
- Agree when parents and carers should be involved in careers and how;
- Identify if there are any learnings from past evaluation of the careers provision;
- Identify who will ultimately be responsible for driving forward the parental engagement programme for that school/college;
- Encourage Career Leaders that have completed the Level 6/7 Career Leader Training to complete the two free online Parental Engagement modules aimed at improving confidence and capability in parental engagement. The two modules build on the Talking Futures resources and provide further tools, resources and videos to support engagement.
Useful Resources
| Resource | Description | Links & Downloads |
|---|---|---|
| Parent & Carer Engagement Strategy | In 2023/24, this strategy was developed with partners to help schools and colleges engage with parents and carers. | Download (.pdf, 0.25MB) |
| Parent & Carer social media cards | Use these Social media cards on your school/college social media to encourage parents and carers to start talking about careers with their children | Download (.zip, 2MB) |
| Link to add to update your website with new resources for parents | To support all staff to feel confident signposting students and parents throughout National Apprenticeship Week and beyond, The CEC have created a resource that you can develop and build on. This resource informs staff about where they can send parents to get information about different pathways and could be housed on your staff intranet for easy access. You may choose to include some of these resources on your website for parents to also access directly. | careersandenterprise.co.uk |
| Display resources | These are useful resources that you could copy and paste onto a presentation that you might deliver at a parents evening explaining the options post 16 and also the qualification levels .There is also a booklet called you option that is also great to share on your website or could be shared at a parents evening. | Download (.zip, 2MB) |
| Parent progression event resources | A selection of resources to help you run a successful parent progression evening including a letter to parent a PowerPoint to use at the event a feedback form along with a range of booklets that you could use on the evening or add to your website. | Download (.zip, 15MB) |
| Resources for website | 2 booklets that could be added to your website to really provide useful information for parents. The first one tells them all about T levels and the second is all about options post 16. | Download (.zip, 2MB) |
| Subject Apprenticeship Packs | Information for the following 4 subjects that could be shared at parents/options evenings to show the progression opportunities linked to subject areas: • Food technology • Humanities • STEM • Arts | Download (.zip, 2MB) |
| Subject Specific Apprenticeship posters | Poster to display at parents events for the following 5 subject areas: • Arts • Humanities • STEM • Law • IT | Download (.zip, 0.45MB) |
| A guide to Apprenticeship Applications | This is a guide aimed at young people but it would be great to also share with parents as it really clearly explains the application process and it would be great of parent/carer were able to use this to help support their child’s application. | Download (.pdf, 1MB) |
| Parents evening LMI Presentation | Power point that could be used as part of year 9 options evening to explain Cumbria labour Market Information and link this to option choices, | Download (.pptx, 7MB) |
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