GEMS Parental Engagement Programme

The GEMS Parental Engagement Programme was launched in late 2009. A highly successful GEMS Parental Engagement Week was held in January 2010 in its schools across the United Arab Emirates and this will now be an annual event.

All our senior school leaders have had specially devised professional development designed to help them incorporate parent engagement into school development strategy and all of our teaching staff will have had professional development in parent engagement by the end of 2010.

Every GEMS school in the UAE has a parent engagement champion and all schools are assessed and evaluated on the extent of their parental engagement activities. A special website www.learnaspirebe.com has been developed for all parents. It has lots of information and tips and resources both on parenting and supporting learning in the home. Some of our schools run blogs to support their parents and students working and learning together.

Each school is unique and develops engagement activities tailored to meet the needs of their communities but certain basics are expected from every school. These will include:

• The school recognising parents as central to the teaching and learning process.
• Parents being informed of student study programmes in advance so that they can discuss these with their children and support them where necessary.
• Teachers providing tools, resources and guidance which can help parents to support their children’s learning.
• The majority of the parent body getting a minimum number of face to face contacts with teachers during a school year in which the child’s progress is discussed and how parents can support further progress.
• A parents’ association which will help the school spread best practice to other parents on helping their children learn at home.

Some of our schools go much further in treating parents as an invaluable learning resource for their students. All of our schools have parent engagement action plans and can supply you with information on what they do.

Parent talks and workshops 

GEMS brings in expert speakers from abroad to provide talks to parents on topics that can help them help their children’s education. 

GEMS schools runs parent workshops on helping children to succeed.