#king'sscholars

The Widening Participation Department at King’s works very, very hard. We promise. Whether it’s running the King’s Scholars and K+ schemes, facilitating summer schools, supporting teacher advocates, or any other activity, we are ALWAYS hard at work. And at every moment, in every project, we are striving to give all young people the opportunity to attend a top university. However, despite this effort, we certainly do not exercise the most influence on the lives of the young people that we work with. Instead, the massive influencers, the truly powerful stakeholders, the vital component of so many successful journeys to university are a group who have been sometimes overlooked in widening participation activities. They don’t work in schools. They don’t even work in universities. Many of them may never have had the opportunity to enjoy higher education themselves. 

This crucial group is, of course, parents. And don’t just take our word for it. Both academics and the government concur. If parents are engaged in their child’s learning and if they are empowered to support their child, pupil attainment soars, and university awaits. As Feinstein and Symons report, parental interest in their child’s education is the single biggest predictor of achievement at age 16. Similarly, the Department for Education explain how ‘Parental engagement has a large and positive impact on children’s learning’. And of course, beyond merely improving attainment, so many of us can attest to the huge influence that parents can have on the decisions and choices that we make. Parents really are integral to ensuring that pupil’s progress to HE.

But why are we telling you this? What role does a university have in utilising this parent power? Well, put simply, parents must be an integral part of all of our widening participation activities. We cannot just reach out to schools and the pupils in them. Instead, we must extend our conversations, our literature, our programmes into homes, and into the minds of parents. They are the key influencers, so we must influence them.

Of course, we must be clever in how we do it. Logistical barriers to engagement must be overcome, such as the time, cost, and transport constraints placed on parents, while we must be very careful not to just talk at parents. Good communication and collaboration, where conversations replace lectures, is far more likely to engage them.