Communicating with parents on choices at 14

This project has been aimed towards working with groups of parents on producing effective solutions to communicating with parents and carers in reference to supporting their teenager's choices at 14.

82% of young people say that their parents play a more important role than teachers of careers advisors in helping them decide their choices at 14 (DCSF research 2007). DCSF invests significant funding into the production of booklets for choices at 14, and this includes some written material for parents.

Key Benefits:

• To be able to explore first hand whether DCSF written material on Choices at 14 adds value.

• To find out what Local Authorities want from the Government to support them in providing material on choices.

• to help schools to communicate more effectively with their parents.

• To work with parents to work out the best way for parents to support their children to make choices at 14.

• To explore what next practice in communicating with parents looks like.

School Level: At very local level the results should immediately help two large high schools communicate more effectively with their parents and should support better choices at 14 for their pupils.

Local Authority Level: Both Local Authorities are playing active roles both in relation to the individual school and in providing active participant groups at local authority. The Local Authorities should be able to feed results into their Authority wide partnership groups.

National Level: The DCSF should be able to use the information in a way that benefits all local Authorities and thousands of parents and their children.