Glasgow City Council serves a population approaching two million. The increase in population is mainly from working aged people migrating into the city. Twelve percent of the population are from non-white ethnic groups. There are around 16,000 children and young people attending Glasgow schools for whom English is an additional language. The city has significant areas of deprivation, with 32% of children living in poverty.

The governance of community learning and development (CLD) in Glasgow is led by the Glasgow CLD Strategic Partnership (GCLDSP). Glasgow Life is the arms-length organisation who are contracted by Glasgow City Council to undertake the education authority lead role in meeting their CLD legislative duties.

The improvement issue

As part of the Glasgow Improvement Challenge and building from self-evaluation, senior leaders recognised they needed to develop a more strategic approach to family learning. They wanted to combine the skills and experience of education and CLD to help improve outcomes for families.

Reducing Glasgow’s poverty and inequality in communities and providing early intervention for families with a child under 5 years of age is an outcome priority for the Glasgow Children and Family Learning Strategic partners.

Partners involved in the Glasgow Improvement Challenge drew from research evidence, which suggested that parental engagement has a positive impact on children progress. The Education Endowment Foundation stated that “it is crucial to consider how to engage with all parents to avoid widening attainment gaps”. “At age 7, parental influence on learning is six times that of the school”. (Desforges and Abouchaar 2003)

Partners drew from these statistics and research to help inform their approach. Partners recognised that engaging parent/carers to be better able to support their child’s learning was a crucial part of their holistic approach to closing the poverty-related attainment gap. In the early days of the improvement challenge, analysis of school self-evaluation reports demonstrated a variable understanding and inconsistent approaches to the delivery and recording of family engagement and family learning activity.

What Glasgow City Council did

In response to research and shared priorities, a Family Learning Team offer was developed. This offer responded to identified need highlighted by school staff. A small team of Family Learning Officers and a Learning Services Coordinator were employed by Glasgow Life. The staff were based within Glasgow City Council’s Education Services. The team worked closely with a Quality Improvement Officer to help close the poverty-related attainment gap. They helped build school and nursery staff’s capacity to develop and deliver a sustainable family learning offer in their establishments.

Glasgow Life Early Years Children and Families Team provide staff and resources to deliver six weeks of post-five family play workshops in six primary schools per term. They also developed a partnership agreement with an external organisation. As part of this, three Family Learning Officers (FLO) are trained as trainers for an evidence-based programme to build relationships between parents and early learning and childcare settings and provide opportunities for parents to share parenting experiences with others. Education staff who took part in the two-day facilitator training during 2023-24 have been supported by their FLO to deliver 17 cycles of the programme.

A bespoke response to the needs of three parent councils in the Govanhill area have identified digital skills and English for speakers of other languages (ESOL) as key to removing barrier to participation. Twelve parents have now completed digital classes in Govanhill Library and there are 25 new parent council volunteers.

The staff team also worked across the early years and primary sectors to offer resources, training and coaching activities, that helped enable establishments to develop effective parental engagement strategies. This helped to improve the range and quality of family learning programmes, increase parental learning and extend volunteering opportunities. As a result, strong partnerships developed that support improved quality and sustainability. The support offered was dependent on the needs of staff and the context in which they work.

Examples of the family learning continuous professional development (CPD) is outlined below.

Universal Offer:

• Principles and practises of family learning and parental engagement
• Planning, monitoring and evaluating family learning and parental engagement
• Sharing best practice in family centred transitions.

Targeted Offer:

Building staff capacity through CPD and coaching to facilitate delivery of targeted and locally developed family learning programmes including:

• Play Along Maths
• English for speakers of other languages (ESOL) Family Play
• Family play in partnership with Glasgow Life Early Years Children and Families Team
• Sharing stories in partnership with Glasgow Libraries
• Health and activity programme to engage parents and children
• Use of community partnership funding to promote equity amongst parents to lead to more sustained engagements

The inclusive nature of the approaches, in partnership with specialist workers, helped reduce barriers to engagement for participants. This included introducing community languages and supporting those with English as an additional language. The ESOL Family Play programme was designed in response to need in one primary school.

Termly, Family Learning Action Groups support citywide early years and school staff to share practice with their peers and learn new skills, which is helping to enhance family learning in their setting. These meetings link school staff with their community partners.

Intense Offer:

FLOs worked closely with staff in identified establishments to embed the principles and practices of family learning as a whole school approach. This includes staff coaching, help with consulting and engaging parents, delivery of high-quality family learning activity, and monitoring and evaluation. The aim is to enable school staff to use a family learning team toolkit to develop an action plan and calendar of family learning activity which is evaluated using How good is our school? (4th edition) Quality Indicator 2.5 Family Learning.

What the sustained impact has been

The strong partnership between Glasgow Life and Glasgow City Council’s Education Services has increased the range and quality of family learning programmes across the city. This is now impacting positively on the most disadvantaged families. The CLD approach is now embedded in school and early years practice and is valued highly by staff and senior leaders. This is leading to the delivery of consistent high-quality family learning programmes. Fifty-one staff professional development opportunities were delivered during the academic year with 1,051 attendances. Of those, 90% of participants stated that the sessions increased their confidence in supporting parental engagement and family learning in their setting.

The targeted and locally developed programmes such as Play Along Maths, Family Play and other parenting programmes are engaging families effectively in learning. This has helped to build parents’ confidence and support their child’s leaning at home. Fifty-six early years establishments and 65 primary schools are now delivering Play Along Maths. This programme uses well known games to support learning at home to help develop both the child and parent/carers knowledge of mathematics concepts and language.

The combined skills and experience of the Family Learning Team and the Quality Improvement Officer has placed the team in a strong position to make effective connections between schools and community partners. Consequently, more schools are benefiting from the support that a wide range of partners can provide. The successful ESOL Family Play pilot programme has led to a wider roll out in partnership with the education services’ English as an additional language team.