International Day of Education – 24 January 2021

Nearly a year after government reactions to Covid-19 started triggering school closures in various parts of the world and more than a month after vaccination became available for those adults who wish to be vaccinated, the International Day of Education 2021 is the best opportunity to demand the immediate return of normal education provisions – we can only echo this year’s message by UNESCO on this. This should be the priority of good governance in all countries. By returning to normal we mean fully opening schools to their entire community of students, parents and teachers with no restrictive measures, but the past year has also shown that there is a need for immediate major changes in what is happening in them. The times of forced home schooling also have proven that parents must be part of decisions on what to change and how.

While measures may have been justified in the Spring of 2020, by now there is conclusive research evidence available showing that

• attending school does not put the vast majority of children at risk of getting seriously ill and they are not transmitting infection to their families and teachers[i];
• school closures have resulted in a devastating decline in well-being especially in countries that were not promoting children’s being together as much as possible[ii];
• mask mandates for children and rules on social distancing in school have a direct impact on both physical and mental health and thus making masks compulsory and orders that prevent hugging and similar physical contact cause direct harm to children[iii];
• education provisions online have a very low efficiency level for both young and older children (even for university students), and most countries failed to offer alternatives to help parents in their educating their children by promoting major deviations from school curricula and recognising some kind of family curricula[iv].

Thus, opening schools immediately should be an immediate step by any responsible government, but there are some pre-requisites that are of utmost importance:

1. In every country there is a low number of children who are vulnerable due to chronic or acute illness. Governments must offer teacher-guided online provisions for them. Given that this can be done in smaller groups and that playful methodologies that have proven to be effective for children forced to be away from school exist, these initiatives, mostly private ones, provided by NGOs need to be utilised immediately.
2. Teachers over 65 and with medically relevant chronic illnesses should be given priority in vaccination while vaccination must not be made compulsory or a pre-condition by education employers. All other school staff needs to be prioritised the same way as the general population as research shows they are not in more danger of infection at school than anybody else who regularly goes to work or shop.
3. Free testing must be made available on a voluntary basis for both children and school staff. However, testing of children must be avoided in case a child had not developed serious Covid-19 symptoms and mustn’t be a pre-condition of attending school or done as a regular activity.
4. It must be fully the parents’ consideration when they allow their children to attend school after an infection.
5. Schools must take it into account that a high percentage of children will return to school in a panic induced by media or the adults around them, and even more have suffered traumas that must be tackled by school professionals. Thus, trauma-informed methodologies, also mostly rolled out by NGOs must be made available to all schools.
6. There is a need to temporarily or permanently delete standardised, central tests from school programmes and to prioritise student well-being and mental health for at least the coming 2-3 years. Research clearly shows that the main victims of the previous year are children.
7. Structures and school leader empowerment schemes need to be put in place to ensure that decisions on school level are done with the active participation of parents partly to acknowledge the fantastic job of parents as educators, partly to ensure that experiences of the past few months are made part of current and future education provision.

In the coming months there is a need to continue the dialogue between schools and parents as well as governments and parents. The experiences and subsequent demands of parents towards school systems have not changed substantially since our research was done in the Spring and Summer of 2020. Parents today have a much deeper insight into formal education, the number of parents engaged, and the depth of their engagement has increased tremendously. Parents’ wishes towards formal education, the structure supporting them in educating their children have been clearly put together in #NewEducationDeal #ParentsFirst. Our call for action has won the support of a growing number of governments, many schools, professionals, researchers and tech companies. It has become part of larger initiatives on renewing education globally. Nearly all elements of the call for action can be made a reality rapidly if a government and/or a school decides to embrace them:

• School should be primarily acknowledged as a place for social learning,
• There is a need to highlight arts and sports alongside STEM, using methods that are suitable for children, with special focus on collaborative and playful methods,
• Centralised testing needs to be replaced by formative assessment methods,
• Schools must work closely together with families and they have an obligation to know families whose children they teach,
• There must be a clear division between the educational job of schools and families,
• Digital technologies need to become standard part of school to cater for individual learning needs, but they must only be a complement to learning in physical proximity, and
• There is a need to rethink curricula to agree on what is really basic knowledge, skills and competences.

We in Parents International believe that the most important positive outcome of the crisis created by governments’ measures related to Covid-19 can be a rapid renewal of education making it suitable for the 21^st century. We need to act fast and change provisions substantially. The frightful lack of critical thinking when facing scaremongering in mass media and the willingness to give up the most basic human rights without major resistance in the world’s population are symptoms showing that school did not prepare most people for becoming conscious 21^st century citizens and there is little sign that schools as they are now will do a better job. Acting along the lines of the #NewEducationDeal may lead to more active citizenship, too, although parents and teachers as part of the general population has not done a great job so far in this field. But we can only do it together. Education for the future depends on #ParentsFirst parental engagement in moulding a #NewEducationDeal in all countries.

Eszter Salamon
Director

[i] For example: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02973-3
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(20)30927-0/fulltext
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7311007/
https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/146/2/e2020004879
https://www.eurosurveillance.org/content/10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2020.25.21.2000903;?crawler=true
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/apa.15371
https://academic.oup.com/cid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cid/ciaa1825/6024998
https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/contentassets/c1b78bffbfde4a7899eb0d8ffdb57b09/covid-19-school-aged-children.pdf
https://www.pasteur.fr/en/press-area/press-documents/covid-19-primary-schools-no-significant-transmission-among-children-students-teachers

[ii] For example https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-124394/v1
https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1186/s13034-020-00329-3.pdf
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/article-abstract/2764730
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Anant_Kumar/publication/340954951_COVID_19_and_its_mental_health_consequences/links/5ea7ccd492851c1a9076636e/COVID-19-and-its-mental-health-consequences.pdf

[iii] For example https://www.tmc.edu/news/2020/05/touch-starvation/
https://psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/2020-39582-001.html
https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m3021/rr-6

[iv] For example http://www.bildungsmanagement.net/Schulbarometer/en/
https://www.nwea.org/content/uploads/2020/05/Collaborative-Brief_Covid19-Slide-APR20.pdf
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00787-020-01706-1
https://www.unicef.org/eca/reports/preventing-lockdown-generation-europe-and-central-asia
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.592670/full
https://news.un.org/en/story/2020/12/1079462
https://journal.iaimnumetrolampung.ac.id/index.php/ji/article/view/914

Our message for World Children Day 2020

We observe World Children Day on 20 November since 1989, the birth of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. In 2020 we have little to celebrate, but observing the day means we need to raise our voice and help raise all parents to do the same for the rights of our children. UNICEF had highlighted that this year, COVID-19-related regulations and restrictions have resulted in a child rights crisis. They call your attention to the fact that the costs of the pandemic for children are immediate and, if unaddressed, may last a lifetime. Their call for action states it is time for generations to come together to reimagine the type of world we want to create. Parents International has advocated for this when we say #ParentsFirst: to empower the primary caregivers, the parents and guardians who are the protagonists of ensuring and protecting child rights. The current child rights crisis is as much a result of a dramatic change for the worse in the lives of parents as that of governments stopping service provisions. This is what needs to change and now. Today’s children and youth, be them young children or even university students, are losing the only chance in many ways if these trends are not stopped and reversed.

UNICEF published the Six-Point Plan to Protect our Children calling governments to take action in various fields. The first of these is “to ensure all children learn, including by closing the digital divide”. The first part doesn’t need any action, all children do learn, the real question is what, when and how. In a recent conference about the Sustainable Development Goals, it has been acknowledged that SDG4 on quality, inclusive education is the overarching SDG. Lifelong learning of both children and adults, especially that of parents is the key to achieving all other action points on the UNCEF agenda.

Universal access to health care and nutrition as well as informed, free choice of vaccination is on the one hand a basic obligation of the state, but on the other hand the most fundamental job of any parent. While access to clean water and sanitation is again mainly a government’s obligation, parents educated in this field play a crucial role in hygiene regardless financial or physical circumstances.  Abuse, violence and neglect are also best prevented by empowering and educating parents, but it needs to be kept in mind that the overwhelming majority of parents actually protect their children from such traumatic experiences. This is an element that child rights activists tend to forget about. We can only applaud the wish to redouble efforts to protect and support families and children within them living through conflict, disaster and displacement. In the current dystopic world nearly all families are living through conflict and disaster – of different proportions depending on the country they live in and their personal situation. The detrimental effect of government regulations on interpersonal contacts must be stopped and – if it is still possible – reversed.

Last but not least, we can only repeat what we have already said several times: child poverty and inclusive recovery is only possible if the primary target of any action is the family raising the child. Programmes directed at the child and only them are deemed to fail the test of sustainability.

Organisations and experts gathered in Parents International are grateful for the support of some governments in making our #ParentsFirst and #NewEducationDeal initiatives a reality, and we can only hope putting parents in the focus of child and child rights protection will become as universal as the observation of 20 November.

The European Commission has published a roadmap on the so-called Child Guarantee, a scheme to combat child poverty, one of the largest challenges to many European countries. In our current position paper an evidence-based reaction is presented in reaction to the roadmap by Parents International raising the voice of a main stakeholder group, parents and guardians supported by our own and secondary research. It is a detailed reaction to the overall approach of the document as well as feedback on the planned actions and the lack of other necessary ones. The roadmap claims to make an attempt at breaking the cycle of poverty but fails to address the issue in the only way that can actually result in that rather than helping today’s children without any sustainable results: supporting and empowering the parents and family raising the child. For this reason, Parents International is obliged to offer the research base as well as an experience-based demand on behalf of those legally responsible for protecting children, their parents and legal guardians.

The document contains but a single mention of parents in the context of “providing adequate income”, and fails to even acknowledge the fact that measures targeting children directly (free meals, free school supplies, food provisions at school) have proven to recreate the need for the same support in the next generation, thus do not break the cycle. At the same time there is clear and strong research evidence clearly showing that providing parents with adequate parenting support and income while making them accountable for providing for their children actually breaks the cycle as it provides children with the necessary, responsible parenting example. The Norwegian approach of family support is an example that should be taken into consideration in this respect being closest to the desirable solution.

The document does not aim to deviate from the already well-known EU approach of setting up and directly financing services that governments find suitable rather than creating an environment that enables parents to make informed choices for their children having no financial constrains also violates basic parents’ rights stipulated in Articles 5 and 18 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Equitable access to services that correspond to families’ real needs is prevented by these policies as only well-off parents have an actual choice while vulnerable families are in the trap of “take it or leave it” having no opportunity to choose what is best for their children, but they have to opt in or opt out of an often single state-financed option. Parents’ organisations as well as organisations working with or for parents and children have long demanded funding schemes that treat services equally and do not punish parents for wishing to use services that are for the best interest of their children rather than ones chosen by states.

It calls for governments to create multi-annual plans, but as it targets a field that is national competence there is little hope those countries that have the largest share of the problem (Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania) will do anything. This is especially true for Hungary that denies the presence of child poverty while having the second highest percentage of children living in poverty in the European Union.

Looking into the services listed as ones to be tackled by the Child Guarantee the first, most shocking, but taking the above into consideration not surprising element is that family and parenting support is totally missing. This should be a priority and a pre-requisite for breaking the vicious circle of poverty.

With regards to Early Childhood Education and Care the roadmap is only aiming at increasing the percentage of children in institutionalised education from an early age. While it is important to offer such services to working parents, it has long been demanded by parents’ organisations, based on WHO recommendations and child development knowledge to implement such programmes in a way that clearly discourages families from using these facilities in the first year to ensure breast feeding and not promoting institutionalisation before the end of separation anxiety. This would require adequate financial provisions for families that consider the best interest of the child and thus opt out of institutionalised education, but also for empowering parents as educators as the crucial role of the first 2 years for later life success is also well-proven.

Health care is the area that is the most accessible of all services in Europe. What the document fails to mention is that the actual problem area is pre-natal care that is not accessible for people living in poverty in many countries thus endangering children in these families already from before they are born. Another area that needs to be scrutinised is vaccination. There are two main tendencies that endanger children’s well-being: anti-vaccination movements and compulsory vaccination schemes that threatens families with removing the child from the family. Both of these are detrimental for child well-being and the EU needs to move in the direction of parental empowerment in this field, too, providing for trustful relationships between parents and paediatricians offering a strong basis for conscious and informed parental decisions on opting in, opting out and creating vaccination schedules that are best for the individual child. Vaccination must be free for all children, but free availability must not be accompanied by making them compulsory.

With regards to education the statement that in all Member States education is free is false. According to our own, EU-wide research there is no EU Member State where education is free and this fact is a main barrier to access. What is more, in the majority of Member States parents are prevented from making choices in the best interest of their child as government funding is often much lower or missing for certain schools. To break the cycle of child poverty, it is of utmost importance that parents are not prevented from sending their children to the school that can support them in reaching their full potential by lack of own financial resources. There are EU Member States where special education needs are often only catered for in schools not affordable for parents living in poverty, while – due to poor access to pre-natal care – these families are more likely to have special needs children.

The European Union cannot afford to have a single child starving, but this must not be achieved by free meals attached to school or other institutional attendance. The recent school closures due to coronavirus have clearly shown how wrong this approach is leaving tens of thousands of children without adequate meals. This, on a much smaller scale, is true at any given time, food support must not punish children that are ill and cannot attend school or on vacation. At the same time there should be schemes to support families in changing their diet both for preventing children from starting and preventing obesity. All programmes that have tried to achieve the later against the family have failed, the most famous of these failures being the one by Jamie Oliver.

Finally, access to culture and leisure has little to do with being able to afford leisure equipment. Member States must ensure that all non-formal education services are equally accessible for children, regardless their parents’ financial situation or disability. Culture and leisure are not to be tackled on their own, but in the wider framework of education. Promoting and financing open education schemes that build on the collaboration and cooperation between formal, non-formal and informal education is key to this. There are successful community approaches that can serve as an example that provide formal education as well as various nonformal and informal learning opportunities such as culture, arts and sports activities as well as library services locally, under the same or coordinated management, adjusted to the needs of local communities. The key to achieve this is to rigorously implement one of the main principles of the EU, subsidiarity. National programmes are deemed to fail having little to no knowledge of local community needs, thus decisions must be made locally while it is the responsibility of the state to make adequate funding available for local communities for this.

To end this input Parents International is ready to offer support in re-shaping the initiative to really serve its purpose: to break the cycle of poverty. Consultation with parents is dearly missing from the action plan, and while it is absolutely necessary to consult those responsible for providing for children, their parents, Parents International can provide research evidence and policy support, bringing in the parental perspective via our members from all EU Member States, parents organisations as well as organisations working with or for parents, often the most vulnerable ones. The EU’s action can only be informed by successful initiatives from outside of Europe that Parents International is also ready to help.

Parenting for a Digital Future – How Hopes and Fears about Technology Shape Children’s Lives is a new and very important book for parents and professionals working with parents by Prof. Sonia Livingstone and her co-author, Alicia Blum-Ross. The book provides ample first-hand research evidence as well as evidence-based reflections about various challenges parents face in a more and more digitalised world. The issue of bringing up children in a digitalised environment has become far more topical recently, due to school closures around the world. In a world that demands more and more from parents, this book can be a flashlight helping parents to find their own path and help professionals to support parenting in the right way – while ensuring us all that there is not only one “right”.

Sonia Livingstone has long been an important voice in the field of digital media and parenting, one of the few who always advocated for a positive approach and the need for empowerment rather than the more common approach of both academia and NGOs, trying to impose legal restrictions and making people frightened by sharing horror stories. The new book is a powerful tool for advocates of digital age as an opportunity.

The research presented went deep into all aspect of the digital age, and catalogues nearly all areas parents might have doubts or questions in raising children in a world that depends more and more on digital technology. They draw a colourful picture showing many different approaches to digital realities, the use of technology, impact of digital developments on the present and future life of children. It investigates how digital technology use has changed the daily lives of families, ensuring all parents that there is no “right” solution.  At the same time the book also tries to finally make people finish talking about screen time in general, and helps us to have a much-needed nuanced approach to passive and active screen time.

Inequalities, one of the most crucial elements of the whole digitalisation reality, get a major highlight. Again, it is dealt with in a very delicate way, showing an important element of reality: it is much less of a problem to get physical access to technology, the core challenge is about the amount of support, scaffolding parents can offer their children. We can clearly see why it is of utmost importance that the focus is on parenting support in order to enable all parents to educate their children well. This way, this book can be added to the evidence-base toolbox of all parenting experts.

We can also see how digital technology is probably the first tool to build a bridge for the inclusion of children with special needs. As education and services try to reflect the needs of individual children, and thus more and more special needs are catered for, we need to stop for a moment and reflect on all advantages of digital technology as well as raise all questions around potential harm. Parenting for a Digital Future offers a balanced view in this respect, too.

Being focused on digital technology per se, we may need to look into the broader impact of technology together, as this is the area where the book raised more questions in us as readers than offered answers in. For example, the chapter on education, clearly written before the coronavirus school closure period, solely focuses on learning digital and not using digital as an additional and flexible resource. However, it is still very much in line with what Sir Ken Robinson, who died the day before the writing of this book review, had pledged for in education.

Parenting for a Digital Future is a surprisingly easy read. It is full of short examples and anecdotes from the qualitative research the authors have carried out. It makes the reader reflect on realities, understand the importance of approaching parenting support with multicultural awareness and in a non-judgemental manner. We can only recommend you to read this new publication if you are a parent, a teacher, a teacher trainer or a professional working with parents with children of any age. It is education professionals who are more likely to know more than average about this topic. We would definitely like to see the book in their hands, but also in the hands of other trusted professionals parents go to for advice (paediatricians, social workers, NGO workers). It is an essential read for all advocates of child rights who want to have an impact on legislation and methodology tackling all implications of digital technology and digital realities. Bearing in mind that parents are the most impactful educators of their children, this book is a must-read for those who wish to empower the primary educators for a bright future of our children – that nearly certainly will be digital.

The European Commission has initiated a public consultation on their Roadmap towards a European Education Area. Based on the experiences of our research done for the #NewEducationDeal #ParentsFirst initiative we have publicly shared a parental view on where the plans are in line with families’ and students’ needs and what requires bolder than planned steps. The public consultation is based on this document. Read our reaction below. We will closely monitor the next steps and lobby as necessary for a better education for children in Europe.

Making the European Education Area a reality is a crucial element of ensuring the future of Europe and the future of European children. The issues highlighted in the roadmap are all very relevant, and we would like to take this opportunity to highlight some of them based on our research and #NewEducationDeal campaign results. We believe that the current EU initiative is aiming at achieving SDG4, and we find it very important to focus on equity and inclusion with a strong support through open schooling, participatory processes and diversity.

A European Education Area should boldly aim for ensuring fundamental rights of children and – using the European Pillar of Social Rights initiative example – to go beyond the re-occurring explanation that education is national competence. Europe cannot afford weak school systems educating future unemployed citizens, and also there is a need for EU member states to work towards ensuring all education related rights, including the right to quality, inclusive education, an uninterrupted seamless transition from school to school over borders in state financed schools as well as mother tongue and mother culture education even if a child’s parents decide to exercise their basic right to be mobile EU workers. This is a topic the EU has not done anything about yet, and it results in a major rights deprivation of young EU citizens living in countries where their mother tongue is not an official language, and governments strictly implementing education in their official language(s) only.

With regards to the roadmap, first of all we want to highlight the importance of using the word educators very carefully and broadly. The European Commission tends to mean professional educators or even only teachers by educators, while especially the past few months have highlighted parents as primary educators. This role of parents as educators has been known for decades, but legislation often overlooks the need to empower parents, the primary – first and most impacting – educators of children.

Another element we would like to highlight is the link between rethinking basic competences and reaching the aim of educating lifelong learners. Our research shows that content-heavy curricula and education inflation are often main reasons for people abandoning learning. An agreement on what basic skills, competences and knowledge are to be fostered by school is a basis for preventing early school leaving and also for people to be become lifelong learners. Parents International has built a wide coalition to define these necessary basics, consisting of education stakeholders, academics, the world of work and other players. We are happy to contribute when the debate on this is being organised as we have already invested into it heavily both in Europe and globally.

I’m enclosing the Parents International call for action #NewEducationDeal #ParentsFirst highlighting the most important areas parents wish to be engaged in – being part of constructing new policy and practice together.  #NewEducationDeal is a global parent initiative with a very strong research base, emphasising learning points of the current COVID mayhem and parent experiences in general with the aim of achieving SDG4. This initiative has been widely supported by governments (including some EU member states), school leaders, education stakeholders and academia, and we hope that the current roadmap is also a step towards making the wish of parents and families in education for a better future for today’s children a reality.

The final element we would like to emphasise is the need to involve not only your “social partners”, but at least the main education stakeholders: students of all ages (even the youngest ones), parents, school leaders and teachers, as well as teacher training providers in all steps of the decision making process. Without this the initiative is deemed to fail.

(This statement could not be more detailed due to length restrictions by the European Commission.)

Time to strike a New Deal on Education and schools

What the COVID-19 school closures have taught us that we should use as a springboard for renewing education.

Schools have been closed for minimum one month all over the world. Teachers, students and parents alike have ample experience of a new way of living, working, learning and teaching. With only a few countries making the move to re-open their schools yet, this is a great opportunity to ensure that education and schooling does not continue as it did or rather did not work in February. It is a unique opportunity to revisit education provisions and to strike a New Deal on Education that is in line with the need of today’s children and offers schooling and other professional education services according to the needs of families and children. All we need to do is catalogue things we have missed and those we haven’t, the ones that were easy to leave behind and what we want to have again, what we liked and what we hated, what was helpful and what was not in these past few weeks, as well as before.

Watch our some of our supporters’ videos on this YouTube playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxwmC9M9oSelThtnThJIrekbFfw7Rhl_2 

School as a place for social learning

What the overwhelming majority of children miss these days, is being together with their friends. In countries luckier than others, children gather in parks and playgrounds. Schools that are closed have opened their own grounds for the local community and offer the possibility of meeting. This is the feature of schools that needs to be preserved in the first place: learning to live in a community.

To achieve global educational goals in equity and inclusion, schools also play an important role in learning to live in a diverse community. Most families have regular relationships with people who are more likely to be similar to themselves than very different – in their cultural background, traditions, level of education, etc. -, so the family offers an educational environment that is not very diverse, while children need to live in a diverse and multicultural society. Schools are key in offering this learning experience. But this is only possible if “academic achievement” – whatever is meant by this notion – is made secondary to social learning and learning to learn.

Schooling at home?

If there is one thing teachers cannot deny these days, it is the fact that the overwhelming majority of parents are schooling champions. Parents have invested time and energy to provide the necessary schooling to their children regardless of technical difficulties, having to cater for 2, 3 or more children all at different stages of schooling with different support needs. Do not be mistaken: the current situation will not result in a boom of home-schooling. Home-schooling is a decision only a few parents are ready to make, the majority will still want to make a deal with schools to support them in educating their children. This deal is about schools doing schooling and parents educating their children in other domains.

At the same time, a huge number of parents had to go deep into the vaults of their own memory to recall notions they had learnt at school and have never used again in order to help their children to learn the same things today. What we need to revisit on the basis of this is what we mean by necessary schooling, what is to be learnt by all and what can be offered to those interested, what the basic skills, competences and knowledge for the future of our children are. This is an area where we can learn from homeschooling parents in order to strike this new deal. They are generally conscious about their decision to not follow current and overly academic national curricula, and they are aware that for real, deep learning, less content is more.

Well-being in learning

Based on the experiences we have had in the last couple of months, we clearly need to rethink what is beneficial for our children’s well-being and what is not. These days show us how important it is to bring arts back to their rightful place in our priority list. People sing, dance, draw, sculpt, write tales and diaries with a little or much more time at hand, and this helps them to stay mentally healthy under pressure. Sports and time spent out in the open is similarly important. People – wherever not prevented by government regulations – have found the form of physical activity that brings them pleasure, be it running, walking the dog, playing basketball or using the numerous hopscotches springing up in their neighbourhood. Pressure will ease or change, but we will still need these activities supported for a higher level of overall well-being.

A huge number of people are using extra time available for learning new things. Some started a new language, some have taken up hobby classes, some even a new degree course offered online. What the unifying characteristic is that they enjoy doing it. It offers an opportunity to emphasise the need to bring back the joy of learning to schools. Research shows that children starting school often lose their curiosity even in a matter of weeks. Content is not engaging, their creativity is not rewarded, they are under- or overchallenged. We can use current experiences to redesign learning at school to make it joyful, to challenge our children to an extent that brings them into the right state to learn (and not overchallenge to discourage them), but also brings them rewards that motivate them to continue. At the same time, there is also a need for school to recognise and support non-formal and informal learning that generally have these elements. In the case of informal education at home, professionals have a responsibility to support families that lack skills to play the right games not necessarily for learning per se, but for well-being in general.

There is also a need to rethink school schedules. In countries where it is made possible and in families where work schedules allows it, people seem to start the day later. Children populate playgrounds when the weather is nice, but not before 10 in the morning. People with flexible schedules go shopping and do sports from about the same time. When schools reopen, it could be the right opportunity to abolish early start. School can still open to cater for care needs and offer breakfast clubs, but child well-being levels would certainly increase by starting later. Similarly, families all experience that children learn better and more willingly if they have time to be immersed in solving a problem or overcoming a challenge. Children of different ages help each other and learn an incredible amount by revisiting earlier studies. This can be a good starting point to rethink 45-minute lessons and class organisation by age.

Testing and trusting

It was interesting to follow the news and see how ready some school systems where to abolish standardised tests, and how ready many teachers are to do so in systems that want to hold on to them. They argue that it is for the health and well-being of children to abolish them, and we could not agree more. Since schools have already collected ideas on replacing these tests, it is a great opportunity to use the replacements – mostly based on evaluating student effort over a longer period of time – instead, if there is an agreement that summative assessment is necessary at all. The best deal would be to only have formative assessment in a new education deal aiming at real learning. This is also a great opportunity to introduce inclusive ways to reduce competition stress. We all know that some students are very competitive but in a formative assessment regime they can still compete – against themselves. For the overwhelming majority of students, this would be the opportunity to experience real and deep learning instead of learning for the test.

This makes it necessary to bring the issue of trust into the equation. We have parent reports from all over Europe and beyond that they are spending a huge amount of time creating evidence that their children are doing their school assignments. The evidence they provide is not about learning, it is to put teachers at ease that they are teaching. In a new education deal we must learn to trust the learner, and challenge them enough for real learning, but teachers also need to trust the family. The best time to start is now, having enough proof that children do learn and parents do educate – and at the moment even school – them. At the same time there is a need to rebuild trust in the professionalism of teachers. Many have passed the exam with flying colours, but about as many have failed. This clearly shows a need for more focus on continuous professional development as well as coaching and mentoring for teachers.

Teachers’ interaction with families

What we have experienced was teachers complaining about children not submitting assignments or having no contact with them, parents demanding much more from teachers or complaining about too much pressure on children, and children being in the middle not really understanding what is happening to them and why. But, at the same time, parents have also complained about teachers not being aware of the fact they are away working and thus not being able to school their children during usual school hours, having assignments that made it necessary for 2-3 children to use the family’s only computer at the same time that parents also needed it for work, but also having to extensively search and study to help children do their school assignments. What appears to be missing is a thorough knowledge of families’ circumstances on the teachers’ side and an honest discussion on what is important and what is not.

In many countries there used to be schemes that made it compulsory for teachers to gain an in-depth knowledge about the families of children they teach. In most countries these schemes have been abandoned and even banned. If a family trusts a school with letting their treasure of a child to be taught there, teachers must have the professional expertise to build the necessary trust for them to be allowed into the family and learn about it to an extent that is necessary for their work as teachers. A good teacher does not teach grammar or chemistry, but teaches children, and for that you need to know the whole child, including backpacks they carry due to outside-of-school circumstances. This must be acknowledged as part of a teacher’s working time and duties.

Digital tools and their use

The current experiences also made people and education stakeholders rethink the role and use of digital technology. Most of those people who had been digital luddites earlier, have started to appreciate the advantages. People dancing or playing music together can now clearly understand the difference between passive screen time and using the screen for being active. Being connected digitally is the only link to others for many at the moment, and we can only hope this connection will be kept as an auxiliary one when everybody can restart face-to-face interactions. Digital alternatives can help us to reduce pressure on the environment by making choices between necessary and not-so-necessary travel, while keeping a healthy level of physical interpersonal contacts.

At the same time, it is clear that the school system is still learning. There is a need for teachers to become more proficient using digital platforms and tools, to explore how digital technology can bring more playfulness into learning and to find a healthy balance between digital and traditional. There is a need for school leadership to limit the number of platforms used and to limit them to ones that offer the necessary means for data protection. Teachers and families also need to learn more about data protection and privacy rights. The huge number of shared photos and teachers’ demands for photo/video proof of studying clearly shows this.

We need a new deal in educator roles with open communication

We have a great opportunity to use the leverage of the current situation for the so much necessary rethinking and renewing of education. UNESCO published their vision of education that can lead to delivering on Sustainable Development Goal 4: quality, inclusive education for all back in 2015, demanding a shift towards tackling education as a common good with shared responsibility for educating and learning. In 2018 the World Bank published research data showing that this is a very timely demand as school systems fail to provide children with basic skills, knowledge and competences.

These past months have proven that parents, families and schools can share the responsibility for schooling needs – with some families in need of more external support – but they do not necessarily wish to do so and they have every right to leave this with schools. Parents and families have also had the opportunity to experience what the contents of schooling are, and that clearly leads to an understanding of the World Bank research results. It is a blessed moment to start from the very base and decide on what the necessary basics are and what share of jobs in delivering education is satisfactory for professionals and those legally responsible for children to actually learn what they need, their parents and guardians. Schools are closed in most countries and now we have an opportunity to only go back after we have changed what they have to offer.

What’s next

In the coming weeks Parents International is organising a series of online discussions on the topics we have identified as key ones. We have invited researchers, practitioners – teachers, school leaders, parent leaders, social workers, non-formal educators, student representatives –, business representatives and policy makers to reflect on these topics. Follow our social media channels or send us a message to participate.

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Media contact: Eszter Salamon, Director

e-mail: director [at] parentsinternational.org

phone: +31 640 91 27 81

The second meeting of EuroFam-Net working groups took place in Porto on 5-7 February 2020. This is a very exciting period in the life of this COST Action as we are in the phase when we define research question for the coming years. This research will inform the building of a European framework on family support, quality standards for family support services and programmes as well as developing a skills framework for those working for service providers.

This project is probably the most important of our current ones as it can have an impact on the lives of parents all over Europe, and probably beyond. We were happy to see that the working group leads are planning to base the activities on the UN Convention of the Right of the Child (UNCRC). This is the general basis for our work, too. We were happy to see that the starting point for the family support framework is a catalogue of those articles of the UNCRC that are related to parents. This means that our colleagues acknowledge the responsibility of parents for the upbringing of their children and the obligation for states to provide the forms and kinds of support that families really need.

The most important next steps is to ensure that this approach will be used throughout the whole project. This will be a difficult task as we might have to work against current political agendas that tend to define families’ and parents’ needs, based on input from a limited circle of civil society organisations claiming representativeness. Our aim is to ensure that the EuroFam-Net will be based on trust in parents and families understanding that an overwhelming majority of them are aware of their support needs and are responsible in their parenting and family life, rather than implementing a control mechanism that the EC and governments tend to implement as it is a much easier task.

After the Porto meeting we have high hopes that this work can lead to a framework that countries can implement in order to move away from the “take it or leave it” approach to family support, and reflect on the real needs of families, taking the best interest of the child as the ground. For this, we are also doing a stocktaking exercise on child-rights based international policies such as that of the WHO, UNESCO and UNICEF.

In the coming months, we will continue working on a systematic literature review to support the creation of the planned outputs, and we will also support the policy review work. We are also supporting the creation and work of national chapters of the Action, and invite our members to contribute to the creation of national case studies that will then also inform our further work.

We were invited to the 1st International True Play Conference and to become a founding member of the True Play Advocacy Alliance. The event brought together nearly 300 experts and was hosted by Anji Play, a revolutionary initiative in China promoting what they call true play. During the week spent in Anji County we visited several kindergartens implementing the true play curriculum, participated at the conference with leading scholars in the field and learnt how they engage the parents in all Anji Play activities.

True play kindergartens are revolutionary in China where play in any form is not a regular part of daily kindergarten life. This is true for most of the Far East, but colleagues from the USA also said that play is less and less part of their pre-schools, and there are some similar experiences from a number of European countries. The Anji approach goes beyond what is usually experienced as play in kindergartens as it lets the children take the lead and  offers a lot of material – much of it would be considered dangerous by national standards in the USA or in the EU – to create their own play spaces with water, sand, paint, ladders, planks, barrels, etc. The programme is based on five principles: Love, Risk/Adventure, Joy, Engagement and Reflection. Children have amazing learning outcomes, closely followed by teachers who do not interfere with the learning being observers only. They are way ahead of their peers attending regular kindergartens – that are highly academic in China.

For success they had to win the parents, too. They started by opening up kindergartens: parents can come anytime to personally experience what their children do and enjoy there. Parents can come to the kindergarten to play with their children there, too. They also provide a parent academy as well as individual discussions with parents. These are used to analysing photos and videos of their own children with the teachers. When new material is introduced in the kindergarten or rearrangements are planned, parents are engaged in decision-making. By this they have managed to convince parents of the importance of play and that the “risky” play forming the basis of the programme is not harmful for their children. As preparation for kindergarten they also invite parents of children aged 0 to 3 to the kindergarten a few times per semester and they also offer possibilities for them to bring their toddlers in.

True play kindergartens are also truly inclusive. It is not only that they offer children with special education needs to attend together with all other children, but equity and inclusion are part of the true play philosophy. Children on the autism spectrum for example often leave kindergarten in much better condition that they enter. They also have a high number of success stories with children with restricted movements or speech abilities. The whole methodology is based on observing the child, reflecting on the observations and providing for the need of that individual child. Even the spaces are formed according to children’s needs, based on observation and thus spaces are not created by an architect or the kindergarten head.

At the moment, they are trying to change teachers’ and school heads’ mindsets to introduce play in primary schools. Primary teachers often say that Anji children enter school with much higher level skills that others, they thrive at the beginning of school, but they underperform after some time not being used to the top-down approach of schools. As teachers/school heads visit the Anji kindergartens they can observe the learning taking place there. They also visit primary schools to show how the approach could be introduced, and they also discuss teachers’ concerns. They would like to see small steps in school, for example the introduction of timetables that suit children better. In Anji kindergartens there are books everywhere. They would like to see them in schools, too, as well as more engaging material. Primary teachers feel the need for change, so hopefully it will happen over time.

During the conference we had the opportunity to listen to a large number of leading experts from all over the world as well as to statements by kindergarten heads who have taken the Anji Play journey. This space does not make it possible to give a full report. It will hopefully be available on the conference website http://www.anjiplay.com/trueplay2019 soon. This is just a short recap of some messages that target parents directly.

Lawrence Cohen called the audience’s attention to basic needs of children: love, health, nutrition, be respected and play. He also recalled that if children are measured against pre-set expectations, it  often leads to considering them as failure. Reflecting on risky play he emphasised that safety and risk are not opposites, you need to feel safe in order to take risks. Parents and other educators often worry a lot out of care, but we need to remember that the opposite of worry is not calm serenity, but trust (in relationships, in resilience, in children’s abilities). He called for parents and schools to offer opportunities for taking risks. He highlighted that a child will recover more from a broken arm than being timid. He called for strong adult leadership to make this kind of learning a reality for all children. This includes school leadership for changing parents’ attitudes and for inclusion.

David Whitebread, the recently retired director of PEDAL Cambridge reminded everybody that risky play is crucial in developing resilience, self-reliance, learning to manage risk, but also for well-being and mental health. His message for parents who try to organise ‘meaningful activities’ for all moments of their children’s time spent awake is that less structured time leads to much better self-regulation, so you should be brave not to supervise your child all the time and offer them much more unstructured time. Don’t worry about them being bored.

His message was also underlined by other speakers. Frances Rust called all educators – and parents as the primary of them – to aim at enculturing children and young generations for a knowledge-building civilisation. We need to re-define the aim of formal education for this and focus on enabling the learner to develop autonomy.

As a founding member of the True Play Advocacy Alliance our message to parents and professional educators is the following:

Even abusive parents want the best for their children. But parents may not be aware of what is best for their child or even that they are abusive. Depriving children of the right to the right education that makes it possible for them thrive and depriving them of play is abuse.

The play revolution that would end this abuse needs convinced and convincing professionals that are trusted by the parents and can then create a partnership with professionals making parents understand that play is education and they can only stop being abusive by letting their children play truly.

So, parents are the key – it may not come as a surprise from Parents International -, but professionals have a major responsibility in supporting them. Just like Anji Play is doing it.

All photos were taken with permission of parents and the children themselves.

The ‘official’ target group of this great new book is primary teachers, namely teachers in English schools, but apart from very few system-specific references, this is a unique resource also for teachers in other countries and at other levels (starting from early childhood provisions), but also for parent leaders and parents’ organisations for training purposes enabling them to cooperate better with schools and understand their role as equal partners of teachers.

The authors know schools, teachers and parents very well. They know that school teachers (as well as most parents) are very busy and may find it difficult to read longer texts. So, the book provides simple and short reads that you can do at a one-per-day or whole-book-in-one-go speed. It starts with facts, evidence and approaches that any experienced parent leader or trainer working on parental engagement will find obvious. This is why it is so important to write it down. It is not obvious at all for many teachers, I would say the majority of teachers in some school systems, and we may omit it in our trainings or narrative.

In my teacher training as well as discussion with teachers I regularly come across the fact that parents are often perceived as scary, and this is a key element that may overshadow home-school relations. This partly comes from traditional training. I keep telling people that scaring us of parents was part of my own initial teacher training a few decades ago. This book does not ignore this phenomenon, but rather gathers evidence and convincing argument to counteract it. Reading the book teachers will hopefully understand that parents are or at least can be allies if a small effort is made to engage them.

Effort is the second key word. When we push for understanding that working with parents is an important part of any teacher’s job, the reply is often about huge workloads and accountability to authorities. Janet Goodall and Kathryn Weston seems to be convincing enough when they explain how some time and energy investment in engaging parents at the beginning will have high payoffs: it makes lives of teachers easier on the long run, and by having supportive parents behind them learning outcomes are better that most often result in better test results and happier supervisors.

The third key element is practical tips. Once you decide to engage parents, you may lack ideas and tools, especially to work with parents that are not from your league, speak another language, have some hostility towards school or seem to be unreachable. Small tricks as well as easy-to-implement engagement strategies described in a simple way help those already converted to parental engagement. Using practical ideas and tried-and-tested methods in the book helps teachers to implement their personal engagement strategies with less investment, building on experiences of others and methods that have worked in other contexts.

At the same time there is a need for a word of warning. In many ways this publication is very similar to a recipe book. You may not find all ingredients in your own kitchen and not all recipes will agree with your personal taste. So, as with any good recipe book, the best way to use it is to find the tips that work for you. You cannot go wrong, all of them are based on strong and evidence-based belief in the importance of working with parents. The authors also recommend that compare your recipes with others. That way you will not only find what modifications to a recipe may improve your cooperation even further, but will also help you as a teacher, trainer or parent leader to see that you are not on your own with your issues and overcoming them is easier in collaboration with other teachers or more experienced parents.

dr Janet Goodall is supporting the work of Parents International charing our Advisory Board

The book:

Janet Goodall –  Kathryn Weston: 100 Ideas for Primary Teachers:  Engaging Parents (Bloomsbury 2018.)

The European Commission has organised an event on education as they usually do every year. Following the 1^st European Education Summit held at the same time in 2018, the 2019 event took place on 24 January (followed by a separate, lower level meeting with civil society) in Brussels with a forward-looking goal: to envision education in 2030 and the necessary actions towards it. Parents International was able to bring not only the parents’ voice into the discussion, but also our global perspective and examples from outside of Europe. Representing parents from 24 European countries, we think it very important to bring European education (back) to global excellence.

The event was officially organised at the initiative of Tibor Navracsics, Commissioner for Education, Culture, Youth and Sport by the European Commission, DG EAC, and provided an open platform for exchanges between about 300 education, training and youth stakeholders and policymakers. The main discussions focused on key issues that education and training will be facing in Europe and beyond until 2030, including the challenges associated to demographics; inclusion and citizenship; technological change and the future of work; digitalisation of society; environmental concerns; and investments, reforms and governance.

The Forum built on the work of the European Education and Training Expert Panel, a group of independent experts from across Europe. The Panel members presented their findings on the above mentioned six challenges and there was an opportunity to provide input to the preparation of the new EU education and training cooperation framework beyond 2020. The event was organised in the form of a mix of plenary sessions and interactive workshops, and there was plenty of time and opportunities for networking.

The most ambitious goal was set by Petra Kammerevert, Chair of the Education and Culture Committee of the European Parliament. She demanded that countries increase their education spending to 10% of their GDP and that a pan-European education policy is developed with a cross-cutting approach focusing on digital and soft skills and involving all stakeholders.

Several participants referred to the European Education Area of the European Commission as a good starting point, and there was an agreement that education actions should be aiming at achieving the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations. Participants endorsed the claim that it costs much more not to invest in education than the actual necessary investment.