Home–school communication: what we have learned from the pandemic

ABSTRACT

Drawing on interview data with school staff and parents from seven primary schools across England, this paper explores how schools and homes worked together during the Covid-19 pandemic, and the impact this had on their relationships with one another. Given that research before the pandemic has indicated that much of the communication taking place between home and school tends to be ‘one way’ – from the school to home (Meier and Lemmer 2015; Leenders et al. 2019), this paper demonstrates how enforced school closure meant that schools had to find new, or modified ways of communicating and interacting with children and their families. Forty-nine interviews were conducted with participants including headteachers, classroom teachers, teaching assistants, school office workers and parents. Participants were asked to talk about their own experiences of the pandemic including how they communicated with one another. Findings revealed that the pandemic facilitated a great deal more collaboration and ‘partnership' between teachers and parents. Participants reported that they had developed a better understanding of one another and that this had positive implications for the children’s education. Given the lessons learned from this study, this has important implications for all schools about promoting effective communication practices.

KEYWORDS:

• Resolved communication
• partnership
• home-school

Introduction

There is a substantial body of literature to suggest that the cultivation of strong and positive home–school relationships is beneficial. While there is much to indicate that good relationships between ‘the home’ and ‘the school’ are related to children’s academic success (Hill and Tyson 2009; Fan and Chan 2001), studies have also shown that parents, schools and communities benefit when parents and teachers have a good working relationship (Hoover-Dempsey et al. 2001). It is therefore not surprising to find that the term ‘partnership’ is frequently used to describe the kind of relationship that schools often proclaim that they want to develop with parents (Billman, Geddes, and Hedges 2005), however, this is not a term that can be used lightly.

Chan and Ritchie (2016) interrogate the concept of ‘partnership with parents’, arguing that schools may be more likely to think of ‘partnership’ in terms of ‘parental involvement’, which in turn can be interpreted as ‘the expectation that parents should follow the teachers’ protocols for participating in and supporting the activities and routines’ (p. 291) of the school or setting, rather than engaging parents in active decision making with teachers. Moreover, they also point out that monocultural teachers from a dominant culture may sometimes struggle to ‘recognise the funds of knowledge that children from other ethnic backgrounds brings from their participation in the cultural activities of their families’(p. 291) which take place outside of the school.

This suggests that the development of effective partnerships between homes and schools is not something that can be taken for granted, and the factors that are involved in achieving a partnership, or in the partnership being inhibited, must be understood. As highlighted by Chan and Ritchie, there is a need to consider how the school perceives itself, and how it is subsequently perceived by the community within which it is situated, in terms of dominance, agency and authority. Much of this is realised in how schools communicate with their children’s families. As many researchers have highlighted, most communication between home and school tends to be ‘one way – from the school to home’ (Meier and Lemmer 2015), with ‘two-way’ communication presenting something of a ‘challenge’ (Leenders et al. 2019). However, in their in-depth study with 55 primary school teachers who were asked to talk about their communication with parents, Leenders et al. found two-way communication was most commonly used in ‘at risk’ schools and that teachers’ attitudes towards parents were ‘best’ when it came to complex issues. They concluded:

When situations are really difficult, teachers stand alongside the parents instead of addressing them from their expert role, asking them ‘How can we solve this together? (Leenders et al. 2019:519)

Given the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in the spring and summer of 2020, and again following the second wave in the spring and summer 2021, with enforced school closure to all but the children of essential workers and vulnerable children, there is no doubt that teachers and parents have been faced with an exceptionally ‘difficult’ situation. What is more, the sudden move from classroom to online/ home learning meant that teachers and parents quickly found themselves working together in very different ways, as schools navigated challenges that have been described as ‘unimaginable prior to the pandemic’ (Thomson, Greany, and Martindale 2021, 296). Together this suggests that there is much that can be learned from the communication that took place between teachers and parents during the pandemic, that could support home–school partnerships and relationships in the future.

Drawing on interview data with members of school staff and parents from seven case study primary schools in different areas of England, this paper explores how teachers modified their communication practices with families so they could facilitate home learning. Crucially the paper also examines how the pandemic influenced how schools and homes worked together during these exceptional circumstances, and the impact this had on their relationship with one another. The main purpose of this paper is to reflect on this to improve future home–school communication practices and collaboration, however, to understand the impact of the pandemic it is important to first reflect on some of the existing issues identified in the literature with regard to home–school communication.

Home–school communication

Much of the literature exploring home–school communication has concluded that schools may communicate well with some of their families, but often struggle to communicate effectively with certain groups of parents. For example, as Chan and Ritchie (2016) highlighted in their exploration of ‘partnership with parents’ in Early Childhood Education settings in New Zealand, teachers were more likely to be ‘complacent’ in their attempts to include Maori and Chinese families in the daily life of the setting, in comparison with families who were members of the ‘dominant cultural group’ (p. 289). Moreover, Martin et al. (2018) examined interactions between asylum-seeking mothers and primary school teachers in Ireland and found that while communication between these parents and teachers was often positive, it was largely ‘directed by the teachers and revolved around ensuring that school rules, norms and practices were adhered to’ (p. 468).

Both of these studies demonstrate that communication between teachers and some parents can be influenced by dominant societal discourses that position teachers as having authority over some of their families. This can result in communication becoming ‘one way’ (Meier and Lemmer 2015), with teachers finding opportunities to impart information to parents, but being less likely to encourage parents to enter into more reciprocal and equal communicative exchanges. Further study has indicated that when teachers get to know their communities then they are more likely to form stronger relationships with parents. For example, Martin et al. (2018) concluded that their study highlighted the significance of teachers’ understandings of asylum, arguing that such understanding would shape and determine more effective home-school communication.

Indeed, other researchers have stressed the importance of teachers understanding families, as a crucial element in developing stronger home–school relationships. Having recognised that home–school communication can be very one directional, Hughes and Greenhough (2006) drew upon the work of Luis Moll, who argued that families and communities have rich ‘funds of knowledge’, which they defined as the ‘historically accumulated and culturally developed bodies of knowledge and skills essential for household or individual functioning and well-being’ (Moll et al. 1992, 133), to develop and evaluate a series of knowledge exchange activities between home and school. These activities aimed to ‘draw out and make visible’ the different ‘funds of knowledge’ held by teachers and parents, and then draw on these in their communication with one another (Hughes and Greenhough 2006, 474). The authors concluded that the personalisation of these activities promoted a ‘genuine exchange’ between teachers and parents, which reduced the impact of unequal power relations.

Interestingly, Chan and Ritchie (2016) also drew upon these constructs in their study, arguing that hybridity theory and the related idea of funds of knowledge help teachers to move beyond the ‘hegemonic safe zones of traditional teacher-dominated practices (p. 289)’, and open new spaces for dialogue with families. They state:

Applying ideas from hybridity theory (Bhabha 1994) and the notion of funds of knowledge (González 2005) opens up possibilities for shifting beyond universal and static definitions of ‘partnership’. Hybridity theorising challenges essentialism and homogeneity. It recognises the non-static and unsettled nature of cultures and discourses as being in a continuous process of hybridisation, and it celebrates the creation of ‘third spaces’ (Bhabha 1994), which allows for new possibilities to emerge across both time and space. (p. 293).

What the authors are recognising is that inequalities do exist, and the unequal power discourses that are so prevalent in society are reflected within the school context. This of course can be highly detrimental to the quest to promote effective partnerships between teachers and parents, but this may be especially relevant to families that are not in the dominant cultural group within which the school is situated. However, as Graham et al. (2021) point out if schools want to promote effective partnerships with parents, and there is substantial evidence to suggest that this is in everyone’s best interests, then there is a need to ‘work productively with these tensions’ (Graham et al. 2021, 1236). This places a responsibility on schools to find ways of communicating effectively with the families of all children in their school community.

As already raised in this review, a reoccurring theme in the literature is the need for schools to understand their communities. This was raised specifically about the integration of students for whom English is an additional language (EAL), in a study by Schneider and Arnot (2017). Having conducted interviews with school managers, teachers, EAL staff, parents and newly arrived Eastern European students in a primary and a secondary school in the East of England, Schneider and Arnot reported that teachers’ knowledge of factors such as their families’ countries of origin, school systems and economic and educational backgrounds, was very limited. They concluded that this lack of understanding about their pupils and their families created a ‘strong barrier’ (256) to effective communication.

The need to take time to understand families was also highlighted by Angell, Stoner, and Shelden (2009) in their study of 16 mothers of children with varying disabilities; they found that trust played a vital role in the home-school relationship, but the cultivation of trust was seen to be somewhat fragile. Angell, Stoner, and Shelden (2009) reported that the responses teachers gave to the participants’ communication strategies had the potential to ‘develop, maintain, enhance, reduce, or even destroy trust’ (153). This suggests that the development of effective communication with families is not something that schools can take for granted – it is something that needs to be cultivated and nurtured and must rest on a foundation of trust and understanding.

The literature also highlights that in getting to know the families within their school community, teachers should also consider the most effective modes and avenues with which to communicate. As one would probably expect, there does not appear to be a consensus in the literature regarding the most effective ways in which to communicate with families, because this does depend on the individual families within the school community. To illustrate, several studies have explored the role of technology in home–school communication. For example, Palts and Kalmus (2015) argue that digitisation and developments in using the Internet have increased the use of communication modes such as email, text messaging and social networking sites, by allowing ‘fast and relevant information exchange’ (p. 67), as well as offering convenience as parents and teachers can communicate without the need to meet in person. However, they also point out that digital communication has ‘shortcomings’ (p. 67) and may even ‘hinder interpersonal communication and information exchange (Olmstead 2013; Telem and Pinto 2006)’ as parents may worry about factors such as the ‘digital footprint’. What is more, Ozmen et al. (2016) make the crucial point that if schools rely on technology in their communication with parents, then technology becomes a barrier to communication if some families do not have access to such technology. This again underlines the need for teachers to understand the families with whom they work, so they can ascertain whether certain or indeed any modes of digital communication are appropriate.

The literature has identified several other channels of communication being used regularly in schools. For example, research has suggested that teachers may want to make more use of phone calls (Kraft and Dougherty 2013) and texting (Snell, Hindman, and Wasik 2020) within their everyday communicative exchanges with parents, as their research identified enthusiasm for both amongst teachers and parents. Meier and Lemmer (2015) present a strong argument for the regular use of the parent questionnaire as an effective means of achieving ‘two-way communication from home to school’ (p. 9). All of these strategies attempt to ensure that parents are not only informed but are actively invited to contribute towards the dialogue and that their views and perspectives are listened to. However, as raised earlier in this paper, effective and reciprocal communication between home and school does not take place in every context, with Gestwicki (2012) arguing that little effort is made by staff in most schools to listen to important information that parents have about their children, their home culture and their views on education.

However, since much of this research took place, we have lived through the unprecedented experience of a global pandemic, that resulted in a sudden, vast and sustained change to how schools worked with families. Teachers had to respond to, and communicate, rapidly changing government guidance and directives to their families. They had to work with parents to facilitate home learning and they had to find ways of ensuring that they kept in touch with all children during the enforced periods of school closure, with many schools prioritising the welfare of children and their families (Bradbury and Duncan 2020; Moss et al. 2020). All of this meant that schools had to find new, or modified ways of communicating and interacting with children and their families throughout the pandemic. This paper reflects on data gathered from parents and school staff to understand not only how teachers and parents communicated during the pandemic, but the impact of this on all concerned as well as the implications of this for future home–school communication.

Methodology

The data presented in this paper was gathered for the study Learning Through Disruption; this project was funded by UKRI/ESRC (ES/W002086/1) under their Rapid Response call. Seven case study primary schools were involved in the study; the research team selected different types of schools and ensured they were situated in different geographical locations across England. This meant that the overall sample included substantial variation. Interviews were conducted with headteachers, classroom teachers, teaching assistants, school office workers and parents. It was not possible to access all of these groups at every school, however, the overall sample included a range of participants from each group.

In total, we interviewed 49 participants using a standard schedule but with adaptations according to circumstances; for example while the same themes were addressed in all interviews, the parents’ interview schedule was quite different to the teachers’. Data collection began in May 2021 and was completed in August 2021. All interviews were conducted online due to the ongoing restrictions enforced as a result of the pandemic. Participants were asked to talk about their own experiences of the pandemic including how they communicated with one another and the impact of this.

Data were analysed using a variety of systems including thematic coding in NVivo and hand-coding, with findings discussed throughout the research team. A separate wave of analysis focused on the data gathered in relation to home–school communication. The data were colour coded using codes such as ‘type of communication’, ‘systems for communication’, ‘relationships’ and ‘identifying family need’. Several major themes were identified however it was found that these could be reduced to the two sub-headings ‘How communication practices changed’ and ‘Home–school relationships’.

Findings

Data gathered in the ‘Learning Through Disruption’ study indicated that communication practices between the seven case study schools and the families within their communities, changed substantially as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. While parents across the schools reported different levels of satisfaction with their school’s communication, and there were some clear cases of tension between teachers and some parents throughout the pandemic, the data suggested that the pandemic largely had a positive impact on many relationships between parents and schools. In particular, schools and parents reported that they had developed a better understanding of one another, and this was closely linked to modifications in communication practices. All schools either adapted how they communicated with parents or brought in new practices altogether. This section reports on these changes before reflecting on how communicative practices over the pandemic impacted the relationships between schools and parents.

How communication practices changed

As expected, all of the schools used technology more extensively during the pandemic to work with children and families and maintain regular communication. Participants spoke about using a variety of online tools specifically for teaching, such as Google Classroom, Seesaw and Tapestry; tools such as these are interactive in that they allow children to post and upload documents, ask questions and meet with teachers and peers. Social media sites such as Facebook and WhatsApp were occasionally used by the schools in this study, but groups on these platforms were more likely to have been set up by parents as a means of communicating with other parents, rather than the schools themselves. Not surprisingly, schools did make full use of their existing channels of communication, such as their school website and online newsletters, to keep parents informed about changes in government guidance and to update parents on information about school closures, etc. While this was appreciated by parents, this kind of communication is very ‘one-way’ (Meier and Lemmer 2015) and was used largely to impart information rather than invite a dialogue with parents.

When asked to talk about home–school communication, the modes most frequently mentioned by participants were email, phone and the video-conferencing platform Zoom – a few participants spoke about using Teams as an alternative to Zoom but this was rare. Teachers in particular often spoke about using these modes together, for example an Assistant Headteacher at School 1 reported that ‘communication was key’ when the first lockdown was announced, going on to state ‘thank goodness for emails and Zoom and things’. Similarly, a Headteacher at School 4 told us, again about the first lockdown … 

So, we made the decision to do our remote learning by email. We relied on parents and carers helping at home, and then we introduced a twice daily Zoom call with the children so you can engage in the morning or afternoon.

Emails and phone calls were used before the pandemic, however, the data suggested that they were used much more extensively and indeed differently once the pandemic began. First, they allowed parents to work directly with teachers and share salient ‘moments’ or resources; for example, the Headteacher in School 6 told us that they ‘set up year group email addresses so parents were encouraged to send photos via year group email addresses’. In addition, the group email also became an invaluable resource for many parents to ask questions or raise concerns, especially about home learning. This was illustrated in the comment of one teacher who stated:

So, we've also now got class emails where parents can contact us immediately if they need any help or support or they have a question. Well, we didn't have those before. Now we have. We've learnt about home learning. (Assistant Headteacher School 4)

While parents across the dataset did report different levels of satisfaction with home–school communication in general, those who spoke about class emails tended to report that they were a tremendous support. For example, a parent in School 5 reported:

You could email them (teachers); they were very good in replying if you had questions or were struggling or needed support in some ways. I was in touch with them by email sometimes. If I wasn't sure about something I could ask them.

This suggests that parents appreciated the class email as a direct channel of communication between themselves and the teacher. While it appears that this was particularly useful for parents as they managed home learning, teachers also spoke very positively about the use of emails to support parents while they were trying to work with their children at home. The following extract demonstrates how a Nursery teacher in School 4 communicated with parents who were struggling with home learning.

Some parents got frustrated that their children weren’t doing it and to those parents I said, ‘Don’t force them’, because one of my other fears was if we force the children to do these things when they’re out of their normal routine, it will put them off, and then when we return to school and return to Nursery, they won’t want to engage themselves. I did not want to destroy whatever level of learning had already been built. So, quite a few times I emailed parents back and said, ‘If they don’t want to do it today, do not force them. Let them play with the train set, let them watch Netflix for an hour or so, let them go and run around in the back garden, because that’s clearly what they need at that time … don’t force them because we’re all under enough stress as it is, without adding additional stress’.

This quote first demonstrates that this teacher understood the pressures that parents were under in trying to meet the requirements of the school in terms of home learning, and as a result was reassuring parents that they could, and should, do whatever was right for them and their child. But it is important to point out that the reason why this conversation could take place was that it had become commonplace for this teacher to communicate directly with parents via email and this seemed to work for both teacher and parents. It was also clear that schools continued to consider the best ways in which to communicate with parents, with a parent in School 6 for example reporting that emails were largely used just for schools to give parents information during the first lockdown, however, parents were then given teachers’ email addresses and encouraged to email teachers directly during the second lockdown, which made it ‘a lot easier to get support’.

However, some teachers did report that the number of emails that they were receiving from parents became unmanageable. A teacher in School 5 described the number of emails he was receiving daily as ‘just getting ridiculous’, and concluded that he needed to make more use of Zoom so he could talk to groups of parents at the same time, rather than saying the same thing to each parent. Similarly, a teacher in School 4 spoke at length of her struggles to manage her inbox. Having reported that the school did not allow teachers to send emails after 16:00 in an attempt to protect the teachers from over-working, she went on to say that she ‘couldn't settle on a night knowing I had like 10 emails in my inbox’; as a result, she responded to everyone straight away but kept the messages in a draft folder ready to send the next morning, but reported that this meant that she was constantly working and could not ‘switch off’. She did say that she stopped doing this by the end of the second lockdown though as it was unsustainable to keep working at this intensity.

This shows that schools did adapt their existing channels of communication to ensure they could communicate with parents during the periods of school closure, and in doing so they found that tools such as email allowed teachers and parents to work closely together which was valued by both parties. Many of the schools in this sample reported that they would keep the class email as a means of communication after the pandemic, however, there is also a clear need to ensure that teachers do not become overwhelmed with too many emails coming into their inbox, and the role of email must be constantly evaluated in this respect.

Similarly, the data also demonstrated that schools made extensive use of phone calls during the pandemic. All of the case study schools attempted to contact each of their families every week by phone. Sometimes teachers would speak to their children during the phone call, but this was not always the case. Many schools spoke about using phone calls largely to ‘check in’ with their families and ensure that they were coping with the pandemic, but they were also used to encourage and support families with home learning.

The pandemic meant that teachers were phoning parents far more frequently than they would have been doing beforehand, which also has interesting implications for the future of home-school communication. First, some teachers reported that the increased contact with parents helped them to identify parents who may have been less engaged with the school before the pandemic. For example, a Nursery teacher in School 1 reported that the drive to contact all families … 

highlighted the fact that … some were not engaging which also reflected their lack of engagement or low attendance previous to lockdown as well, so, they kept that pattern … so we were on the phone, phoning them up, encouraging them and things like that but yes it did show up to be the families who weren’t really engaging previously for various reasons.

This suggests that the intense drive to ensure that all families were reached by phone alerted teachers to issues of engagement that were often already present. In some cases, teachers told us that they struggled to contact some families because they just did not have access to the necessary resources; for example a Headteacher in School 2 spoke of a family having ‘one phone between a gang of 5’, while others spoke of parents struggling to engage due to low levels of literacy, mental health issues, poverty or a lack of fluency in English. Data from this study and others suggested that teachers went to extraordinary lengths to ensure that they made contact with all families and well-being was frequently prioritised above anything else (Moss et al. 2020; Bradbury et al. 2022), yet teachers were reporting that the issues they were encountering were often an exacerbation of existing issues and the pandemic simply allowed these to become more visible.

There was no doubt that this was a very challenging period for all concerned, however, several teachers reported that they learned a lot more about their families during this period, which is discussed in further detail in the next section. What is more, as discussed in relation to emails, some teachers also spoke about the benefits of communicating with parents by phone and stated that they will continue to use the phone more often even after the pandemic is over. For example, the Headteacher in School 7 reported that the teaching assistants in her school developed especially strong relationships with parents during the pandemic because ‘our teaching assistants were making all the phone calls home – teachers were busy teaching and the teaching assistants were phoning all of the children in the class’. She went on to state that this means that if a problem arises with a child now, teaching staff will ‘just go and phone their mum’, rather than ask a member of office staff to call, because they are all ‘so used to phoning’.

This careful analysis of communication practices taking place between schools and families has revealed that teachers successfully used existing methods of communication far more frequently and for different purposes during the pandemic, indicating that these modes of communication have affordances that may not have been previously recognised. Yet the study also demonstrated that video conferencing tools such as Zoom were not only widely used but were, for the most part, widely valued by parents and school staff. What is more, many participants reported that having discovered the opportunities that platforms such as Zoom created, they would continue using it. The Headteacher in School 4 told us:

Some wonderful things happened on Zoom calls, we played Bingo and read books and talked to the children, and we had an agreement to show that parents and carers followed the rules and there was someone in the room … . Many things we'll stick with, that we've done through the pandemic, but one thing that's really improved for us is communication with parents and carers.

While there was no doubt that participants had missed face-to-face interaction throughout the pandemic, both parents and school staff also reported that video conferencing platforms offered opportunities for contact and collaboration that were convenient and effective. As a result, many of the case study schools reported that they will carry on using Zoom or Teams for certain activities such as parents’ evenings, assemblies and worship. However, the data also indicated that the use of Zoom and Teams for teaching online had a significant impact on the relationship between teachers and parents as they were able to work much more closely together in a way that had just not been possible previously. While some teachers told us that they had initially felt nervous about teaching online knowing that their lesson was being accessed by parents as well as children, the overriding outcome seemed to be very positive as highlighted in this comment:

Whereas in the classroom, it is you and your staff and your children, you know each other, but in front of the parents, oh my gosh, that was a bit scary sometimes. But luckily, it helped us to build a relationship, and to continue to build a relationship with the parents. (Class teacher School 1)

Many other participants also spoke about the fact that having parents sitting in on lessons helped to reduce boundaries between home and school and encouraged a sense of mutual respect and understanding. Parents also reported that they understood aspects of the curriculum, with a parent from School 6 telling us that she ‘can actually do fractions now’, and generally has a ‘better understanding’ of her daughter’s education. Moreover, the Headteacher in School 7 stated that the online lessons had had ‘this amazing effect’ on some of the parents in her school, particularly those with younger children, as parents were generally present throughout. She went on to report that having had ‘a masterclass in phonics from a very, very skilled teacher’, parents told her that they had not only learned a lot about phonics but were impressed with … 

 … how skilful a teacher is to have 20 children on the screen and not be shouting or screaming at anybody. Just positives. Congratulating the children and saying ‘thank you for that - lovely - next time just make that a bit different’. The way the teacher cleverly, skilfully and positively pulls everybody together and the parents were going ‘I learnt how to be a better parent.

The data from this study has shown how communication practices during the pandemic became increasingly ‘two-way’ (Leenders et al. 2019). In addition to the above, some schools also spoke about developing their use of surveys with parents, which often received a high response rate. These appeared to be especially successful in School 4 where a class teacher told us that they ‘all know how to make a survey now’ to understand what parents want and need, and the Headteacher reported that they have had ‘excellent uptake’ and that parents are happy to tell them what they are happy about and what they are concerned about. Clearly, changes in communication practices which were enforced as a direct consequence of the pandemic led to some very positive outcomes about how teachers and parents communicated with each other. In particular, the frequency and intensity of communication seemed to promote a depth to the relationship between home and school and a genuine sense of partnership as now discussed.

The relationship between home and school

Almost without exception, school staff in this study spoke very positively about how their relationships with parents had improved as a result of the communication practices taking place over the pandemic. Interestingly, participants from several different schools said that the pandemic had reminded them about just how important ‘the home’ is. A nursery teacher in School 1 reported that one of the things her school had learned was ‘that it just reinforced for us how comfortable children are and were in their home environment’. Similarly, a teaching assistant in School 5 concluded her interview by stating that she just wanted ‘to reiterate the point of how important I think it’s been for children to spend time at home with parents’.

While there is substantial evidence to suggest that being at home was not a positive experience for all children (Moss et al. 2020), and this was certainly something that school staff in this study were very aware of, this does not detract from the fact that the pandemic allowed school staff an opportunity to reflect on the importance of the family in the lives of their children. Moreover, some teachers also spoke about the effect of the pandemic on their relationships with parents. For example, having reported that the pandemic made staff in her school realise ‘just how important relationships are with parents and carers’, the deputy headteacher at School 4 concluded:

I think having the break from having parents in school and being involved, it's made us realise that we really do like having them in and being involved.

While the new ways of working together and communicating during the pandemic allowed many parents and school staff to feel as if they got to know each other better, the data also revealed that both teachers and parents developed a new appreciation for one another. As discussed above, school staff spoke of having a renewed appreciation for the role of the home in their children’s lives, however, some teachers also felt that the collaborative ways of working with parents resulted in parents gaining a deeper appreciation for teachers. For example, a nursery teacher in School 1 said that many of her parents had become ‘so appreciative because they now realise that teaching children is not as easy as you thought and it’s not a nine till half past three job’. Similarly, having reported that communication with parents and carers had improved over the pandemic, the headteacher of School 4 went on to say:

It's just absolutely fantastic - that we are at a really good stage. Their (parents) understanding and empathy - empathy for school staff, has really improved.

This suggests that some teachers felt that the experiences throughout the pandemic encouraged parents to gain a deeper understanding of their children’s education and indeed a richer appreciation for what teachers were doing in school. In addition, the data also strongly suggested that school staff similarly developed an understanding of what parents were trying to achieve at home, especially in relation to home learning. For example, a class teacher in School 2 told us that parents ‘really did try’, while the headteacher at School 3 reported that it was ‘very, very humbling as a leader … to watch the commitment levels of our parents and children’. What is more, several teachers expressed sympathy for parents who were struggling to get their children to engage with home learning as observed in this statement:

Yes, I did feel sorry for some of the parents as well because some of my children, you would hear the parents going ‘Listen to your teacher – listen’. And they would be chucking cushions across the room or just legs up in the air! (Nursery teacher School 1)

It was also very apparent in the data that many members of school staff felt that their close interactions with parents over the pandemic led to them gaining a greater understanding of the issues some of their families were facing daily. School staff spoke of being much more aware of things like ‘the digital divide’ (Headteacher School 5) within their communities, and difficulties with literacy amongst the parent population. Schools also reported that the pandemic ‘amplified poverty’ (Class Teacher, School 2), meaning that schools became much more aware of factors such as poor housing and inadequate nutrition among their families.

While this was distressing for schools, the data indicated that schools appreciated this opportunity to understand their communities better and felt that they were now in a stronger position to support families with their specific needs. This was particularly evident in School 3. Having reported that most of the families in the school catchment are from a lower socio-economic background, the headteacher told us that many parents struggle to trust the authorities and ‘don’t like any police and don’t like social workers’, however, she went on to state that over the pandemic the families developed a sense of ‘absolute trust’ with the school, which had in turn ‘earned its stripes’ with the children’s families.

To return to the whole sample, such understanding had an impact on how some of these schools are planning to work with their families in the future. For example, having reported that the pandemic emphasised the fact that as a school they placed families ‘at the centre of what (they)do’, a class teacher at School 1 went on to state that this has ‘reinforced the fact that family work is essential.’ Several members of staff at School 5 made the point that their communication with families during the pandemic highlighted that the community of Bengali families within their school did not engage with the school as much as other families. A headteacher in this school reported that as a school they now need to ‘really work hard at trying to make inroads there’, and that the Bengali community are ‘just as much a part of the school as everybody else’. She concluded:

We need to understand them more. They need to understand us more and we need to work together with bridging some things there, so that their children are also able to experience the same cultural capital as anybody else.

In summary, the data gathered in this study was awash with comments indicating that school staff and parents felt that they had developed a better understanding of one another throughout the pandemic and that this had positive implications for the children’s education. While some schools were quite specific about how they wanted to build on this in the future, the overall dataset has some important implications for all schools and what we have learned from the pandemic about promoting effective communication practices between the home and school.

Discussion and conclusion

This paper has shown that the schools in this study all found that their communication practices with parents, and their subsequent relationships with their families, improved as a result of the pandemic. As raised in the literature review, much of the communication that takes place between schools and homes tend to be ‘one way – from the school to home’ (Meier and Lemmer 2015), yet the need to work much more closely together during the pandemic seemed to encourage a ‘two-way’ exchange that reflected a genuine sense of partnership for many. It is interesting that Leenders et al. (2019), writing before the pandemic, found that teachers’ attitudes towards parents were often at ‘its best’ when situations were really difficult, as it does seem that the challenges of the pandemic were in some ways a catalyst for improving communication between schools and homes. The project data indicates that this was likely to be related to the fact that communication practices over the pandemic facilitated an opportunity for school staff and parents to understand one another. This led to a far more empathetic relationship that was often embedded in a climate of trust and mutual appreciation.

Chan and Ritchie (2016, 289) pointed out that it can be easy for teachers in schools to remain within ‘hegemonic safe zones of traditional teacher-dominated practices’, but in applying ideas from ‘hybridity theory’ (Bhabha 1994) and the related notion of ‘funds of knowledge’ (González 2005), teachers can enter a new space which acknowledges the unsettled nature of culture and discourse. Data from this present study strongly indicated that the pandemic may have allowed for such a space to emerge, where boundaries between home and school were somewhat eroded given that the work of the school was taking place in children’s homes. As this paper has demonstrated, this led to both teachers and parents appreciating the roles of one another, encouraging a mutual sense of respect to develop in many cases.

As this paper has shown, school staff and parents spoke of developing a greater understanding of one another with teachers in particular reporting that they had acquired a far more nuanced understanding of the specific attributes and needs of their community throughout the pandemic. This helped some schools to appreciate where they need to direct their future energies in terms of promoting effective home-school partnerships. For example, School 5 reported that they came to understand how they needed to find ways to include Bengali parents in the day-to-day life of school – this is important given that a lack of such cultural understanding has been seen to be a ‘strong barrier’ (Schneider and Arnot 2017, 256) to effective communication. Moreover, School 3 found that they had managed to cultivate an ethos of trust with parents in their community who generally did not trust authority figures. Given that previous research has found that the responses teachers give to parents’ communication strategies have the potential to ‘develop, maintain, enhance, reduce or even destroy trust’, staff at School 3 recognise both the fragility and privilege of this trust, which will inform their future work with parents.

In conclusion, this research has several important implications for all schools in terms of everyday home-school communication. Schools need to reflect on the channels of communication that currently operate in their schools and ensure that they offer opportunities for two-way communication to take place. This study has suggested that it is important to find the appropriate modes of communication that work for the families within a particular school catchment area. This may take a few attempts but it worth trying out different communication practices to find what is the most effective in encouraging successful two-way exchange. As most schools are probably already aware, the communities within which schools are situated vary hugely in terms of factors such as socio-economic status, culture, ethnicity and so on. This can have a significant impact on the ease with which schools find they can communicate effectively with their families, yet this study has shown that in taking time to understand the unique and specific strengths, ‘funds of knowledge’ and challenges within a community, schools can develop strong relationships with parents and families that will benefit all parties and especially the children. In brief, the pandemic presented an unparalleled opportunity for schools and parents to work together as a unit. Such unity should now become an aim of primary education. In the words of a participant:

You are a team. It's the parents, the child, and the school. (Headteacher School 5)

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).