2. What assessment has the Cabinet Secretary made of the impact that increased parent participation will have on attainment levels in schools? (OAQ51127)

Thank you, David. Evidence suggests that family engagement can have over six times more influence on a child’s educational attainment than differences in the quality of the school. Our FaCE toolkit and Education Begins at Home campaign continue to ensure that family engagement in children’s learning remains a priority for practitioners.

I thank the Cabinet Secretary for that. Schools are required to include in their development plans details of how the governing body would seek to meet school improvement targets for the year by working with families of pupils at the school. In a survey by PTA Cymru, it was found that only 66 per cent of parents said that their child’s school was good at communicating with them, compared to 76 per cent in Northern Ireland and 73 per cent in England. So, both those jurisdictions are ahead of us. I’m particularly concerned about how schools contact foster carers, who obviously stand in for the parental role. I think that this is very important and ought to be given a high priority in schools to ensure that they’re doing this essential liaison effectively.

Thank you, David. I continue to look at new and innovative ways in which we can build relationships between schools and parents, given the crucial role that they can play in raising attainment. The FaCE toolkit, as I said, is being widely welcomed by practitioners in schools. Consortia are working with schools to ensure that it is taken up.

You raise a very important point about the issue of foster carers. I know from some of my own constituency casework how, sometimes, foster carers can find it difficult to obtain places for children who are placed with them if they have come from out of county. So, thank you for raising this important matter and I will investigate with officials further what more we can do in this important area for that important group of children and their carers.

I thank David for raising this because I think the success of the school is integrally linked to the involvement of parents. Would she acknowledge, however, that there are some schools with more significant challenges in that engagement with parents and of parents with their children as well generally? Perhaps she could comment on what measures she can take within the Welsh Government to overcome those hurdles? She’s visited some schools in my constituency—and I welcome that—which are seeing these challenges.

Would she also like to comment on the importance of Flying Start programmes in starting this early engagement with parents, being involved in the lives of their children as well? It was a delight last week to be at the opening of two new Flying Start centres in my own constituency in Lewistown and also in Garth. It’s the twelfth within Bridgend. They’re having a major impact in having that role of involving the parent in the lives of their children and ultimately in the life of the school as well and of their future education.

Thank you, Huw. Flying Start doesn’t sit within my portfolio, but you’re absolutely right to draw attention to its crucial role. I agree with you that the earlier we can intervene in children’s lives with positive benefit, the better chances that learners from more deprived backgrounds have later on in life. That’s why we introduced the early years pupil deprivation grant—sorry, it’s the pupil development grant now—in April 2015 to provide additional support for our youngest learners, including support around speech and language development and the early development of literacy skills, which sometimes can be challenging. We augment that work, for instance, with supporting BookTrust Cymru to provide reading materials for families as well as the ‘Parenting. Give it time’ campaign and our Education Begins at Home campaign, where families have access to free resources to help them help their children.