Attendance Letters and Family Engagement by Charli Mia xx

Honesty and clarity

2025-03-19 00:43:57 UTC

Be upfront and honest about how many days, how we're tracking academically, presented in a clear way to parents.

Understand where we are

2025-03-19 00:44:36 UTC

Tasmania has functional literacy of 50 per cent. Are letters the best way to reach out?

2025-03-19 00:46:32 UTC

Letters and even phone calls are non preferred ways of communicating with parents and with society in general. People might answer the phone number from the school thinking 'something is wrong' (i.e. they have pulled over from driving or stopped work) to take a school phone call, only to get an 'attendance chat' on the other end. This conjures up negative thoughts straight away.

2025-03-19 00:47:35 UTC

? Parent voice re: what works around how they preferred to be contacted and how they can partner with schools around follow-up

2025-03-19 00:48:02 UTC

How are we engaging the parents with low literacy? We know the many low SES schools have the highest number of unexplained absences. Is our communication accessible to these parents?

Data

emmaaorangi1 — 2025-03-19 00:48:12 UTC

We have lots of data available to use, how can we use this data to suit our needs?

2025-03-19 00:48:29 UTC

What do we already know about parental engagement more broadly?

2025-03-19 00:48:45 UTC

Systems that talk to each other should be seen as a bare minimum.

More supporting tools for communication with families

strategicpolicyandprojects — 2025-03-19 00:50:56 UTC

tools to support School Improvement Plans

2025-03-19 00:51:09 UTC

These forms of communication could be seen as impersonal. They should be a "minimal" part of a broader engagement strategy, not a key component.

Family Portal

emmaaorangi1 — 2025-03-19 00:51:13 UTC

Andrew C mentioned the 'family portal' that used to exist, which has now been retired.

2025-03-19 00:51:19 UTC

In an ideal world, data, records of communication, plans would flow to an edi type attendance hub that included resources, templates, scripts etc.

jessicaisaac1 — 2025-03-19 00:52:08 UTC

Positively personalising correspondence to increase parental engagement of content (considering levels of literacy)

engagement with families

2025-03-19 00:52:17 UTC

engagement with families relies on relationships and this takes time regardless of the method of communication

EAL

2025-03-19 00:52:44 UTC

Communication in different languages?

Monitoring

2025-03-19 00:53:19 UTC

How might we monitor the impact of a trial of nudge letters? Eg. use of Student Change Report in Power BI, end of Term 1 compared to midway through Term 2? How can we make this easy and not too challenging for school leaders.

Pilot

2025-03-19 00:54:12 UTC

Pilot different strategies and letter with DSI support re data..what is possible? What data sets can be used? Easily?

2025-03-19 00:57:17 UTC

Can we list community supports in the letters ? For support with school lunches contact X, for support with transport or bus access contact X, for support with X contact X