Education: Community Cohesion - Schools told to bring parents together

Education: Community Cohesion - Schools told to bring parents together by Nancy Rowntree, 16 May 2007 in Children Now.

"Schools will need to work with parents to improve community cohesion under Government guidelines published last week.

Draft guidance on the new duty to promote community cohesion, which comes into force in September, outlines how schools must bring parents from different backgrounds together, as well as pupils.

The guidance says schools need to consider good partnership activities including "bringing parents from different backgrounds together through parenting and family support and community use of facilities for activities that take place out of school hours".......

Meanwhile parenting groups welcomed the proposals to get parents more involved. Jan Fry, deputy chief executive of Parentline Plus, welcomed the proposals to bring different communities together but said it must be done in a sensitive way. "I would hope that schools would partner with community groups in order to make it work," she said. "And schools taking this on by themselves is a huge responsibility, particularly if there is no extra funding for outreach work."

This is an opportunity for Community Family Trusts which are trying to build up local social capital to introduce schools to services that will help to develop social and domestic cohesion through parenting courses and assessment tools such as talk2me.

talk2me is a tool for measuring progress in social and emotional education in line with the Every Child Matters agenda which can also be used with parents.