Parental Partnership Audit Framework

The SSAT Parental Partnership Audit Framework is a self-evaluation tool that focuses on five key areas relating to working in partnership with parents and carers:

• School ethos and culture
• Parent/carer engagement with learning and development
• Information exchange
• Consultation and feedback
• Impact and benefits for pupils and the wider school community

Use the descriptors to review and quality assure the current practice within your school. The four options are: Beginning, Developing, Embedding or Transforming. All criteria level descriptors build on each other to avoid repetition ie. to achieve ‘transforming’ a school will need to also meet the requirements for beginning, developing and extending.

Members have used this audit tool in a range of ways to support conversations in their school. Here are a few of the ideas we have seen so far:

• self-assessing the current level of parental engagement in the school and identifying areas of strength and areas needing improvement.
• used to create the framework for monitoring and evaluation of the schools progress and measuring the impact.
• the basis for generating questions for a survey of parents and carers. The survey covered the five key areas of the audit ensuring nothing was forgotten.
• used in resourcing discussions when it was identified that a better communication platform was needed, why and intended outcomes so that funds would be budgeted.

The audit tool is an SSAT member benefit for all staff located in SSAT member schools’ and is for internal use only.