How often should schools contact families? These schools might know

Krystle Bridges says she has access to four channels of communication with her school on any given week.

“There’s something for everyone, no matter how you like to communicate,” the Brisbane mum-of-two said.

“I don’t think you could say you’re not finding out about things – it’s there, you just have to pay attention.”

Western suburbs dad Paul Symes said he and his wife were signed up to different channels, in particular when it came to parents’ groups.

“We’ve obviously both got jobs as well, [and] there’s only so much storage space in my brain.”

Facing this wealth of access and increasing variation in families’ expectations, schools are threading a needle with a shrinking eye when it comes to what information they send home, Australian Catholic University Associate Professor Paul Kidson said.

A former principal and expert in educational leadership, Kidson said while some families were content to be hands-off in their children’s education, parents who wanted to be involved were more time-poor than ever before.

“Partly that’s because the demands of their workplace,” he said. “It’s literally an impossibility for them also to be able to spend huge amounts of time at the school.”

Kidson said families of a single cohort more often crossed generational lines.

“You’re getting some parents who are now quite old when they’re having children, [and] you’re getting a new breed of people who are coming through in their 20s and 30s having children,” he said.

“They are of a quite different mindset than some of those families that might be into their 40s, or even in their 50s if you’re talking about secondary schools.”

Kidson said whether a school could successfully engage with parents boiled down to its culture.

“If there is a leadership that embraces the idea that parents are active partners, wants to work with the community, [and] wants to positively engage them – that’s the beginning point,” he said.

The school is among the first of almost 50 independent schools across the state – including St Margaret’s Anglican Girls School and Clayfield College in Brisbane – involved in the Queensland Independent Schools Parents Network state-sponsored engagement program .