On Wednesday 16th July 2025, the Schools & Academies Show partnered with VenturEd on the webinar 'Improving Pupil Learning and Attendance Through Parental Engagement'.
We explored how better engagement between schools and families can transform student attendance, outcomes and wellbeing. Here's some of the key takeaways.
Key Takeaways:
- 📆 Parental Engagement Is Crucial to Improving Attendance: Schools with low parental engagement often see higher absence rates and 85% of parents want to play a more active role in their child’s education.
-
🩺Attendance Challenges Are Still Deeply Felt Post-COVID: Persistent absence has doubled since pre-pandemic (now 1.42M pupils) and severe absence (missing >50% of sessions) has also doubled.
-
💪Strong Engagement Drives Better Student Outcomes: Students with involved parents show improved mental and physical wellbeing (95% correlation) and are more likely to succeed academically and socially.
-
📊 Top-Down and Bottom-Up Strategies Must Align: Schools need tools to connect daily with families on the ground. combining analytics with direct engagement strategies yields the strongest results.
You can watch the webinar in full with the link below 👇
