Can family engagement be a gamechanger for education post-COVID?

Until the COVID-19 pandemic, the global education community spent relatively little time thinking about the role of parent engagement in education. But when almost all the world’s countries shut their school doors last March, engaging parents and families moved quickly to the top of the agenda. Educators and education leaders around the globe rapidly developed new and creative ways of engaging parents in their children’s learning, and parents from rural communities in Botswana and India to urban centers in the U.S. and U.K. have seen up close inside the black box of classroom activities. Will parents’ unprecedented exposure to children’s education shape their beliefs about what a good education looks like over the long term? Can new forms of parent engagement be a gamechanger for education after COVID-19? These are just some of the questions that the Center for Universal Education (CUE) at Brookings tried to answer in a survey of more than 25,000 parents across 10 countries and one global private school network. Working with the Family Engagement in Education Network of over 30 project collaborators from civil society, government, and the private sector, CUE is seeking to better understand parents’ beliefs and experiences about their children’s learning. On March 16, CUE will host a webinar to share the findings of its parent surveys and consider how the new voices and altered power dynamics could lead to systems transformation. After a presentation of the survey findings, there will be a moderated discussion with members of the Family Engagement in Education Network. Viewers can submit questions via email to events@brookings.edu or via Twitter at #FamilyEngagement.