Rethinking the Parent-School Relationship in the Digital Age

Why it is important to consider parental engagement in EdTech design and evaluation.

As educational technology (EdTech) becomes more embedded in schools, it is driving new opportunities, expectations, and questions when it comes to parental participation in education.

In this essay, we explore this shifting parent-school dynamic and examine the role EdTech currently plays in shaping it. Specifically, we will cover:

• Parental Involvement vs. Parental Engagement – The key distinction between school-led involvement and parent-driven engagement in education.
• Parental Engagement on EdTech Impact – A data-driven look at the parent engagement tools on EdTech Impact.
• What Teachers Value in Parent Engagement Tools (and What’s Missing) – Insights from teachers on what works — and what’s lacking — in EdTech solutions for parental engagement.
• What Research Says About Parental Engagement – Academic perspectives on how parental engagement influences learning, the role of digital tools, and evolving challenges.

Through this exploration, we’ll provide a clearer understanding of how parental engagement is changing, how effectively EdTech is supporting this change, and the key challenges that educators and policymakers must address moving forward.

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Parental Involvement vs Parental Engagement

Parents play a crucial role in education, and their involvement significantly influences their children’s academic success.

However, there is a key distinction between parental involvement and parental engagement.

• Parental involvement refers to school-directed activities where parents participate based on guidance from the school, such as attending meetings or volunteering.
• Parental engagement is more self-driven, with parents actively shaping their children’s education and having a stronger voice in school-related matters.

While involvement often relies on one-way communication from schools to parents, engagement fosters two-way dialogue and deeper parental participation in learning. Naturally, the way parents engage evolves as children grow and their educational needs change.

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Parental Engagement on EdTech Impact: A Picture

On EdTech Impact, one of the impact metrics we invite teachers to assess is how effectively an EdTech tool’s design fosters parental engagement.

To date, teachers from 789 schools have left over 900 reviews on our marketplace for solutions aimed at enhancing parental engagement. They have reviewed 67 different solutions, with three — Britannica School, DoodleLearning, and School App for Parents — receiving more than 50 reviews each. Nineteen solutions have scored highly for ‘improving parental engagement,’ based on average ratings (we only included in the count solutions that had received six or more reviews).

The highest-scoring product is Kinderpedia – “an all-in-one digital tool designed for K-12 institutions to manage academic and administrative work, engage families, and automate tuition fees invoicing and payments, all within a secure, intuitive platform and mobile app.” Kinderpedia’s design promises to offer “a suite of real-time communication features that reduce parental anxiety and foster a true school-family partnership”.

Among the other top-scoring products, more than half are information and data management systems designed to support schools’ communication with parents — similar to Kinderpedia. In contrast, only three of the top-rated solutions focus on subject-specific learning and teaching.

To gain deeper insights into what teachers value — or feel is missing — when it comes to EdTech solutions’ impact on parental engagement, we examined their feedback in greater detail.

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What Teachers Value about Parent Engagement Tools (and What’s Missing)

Improved Parental Involvement

The majority of teacher comments focus on the quality of parental involvement, i.e. the effectiveness of schools’ communication with parents and information sharing.

Strong communication ensures that parents stay informed about school updates, student progress, and key events. Many educators highlight how certain tools streamline this process, providing greater transparency and making it easier for parents to stay engaged in their child’s education.

• “You can see accurately who is reading your messages.” (IT Consultant on Parent Hub)
• “Parents love the calendar and lunch menu being to hand.” (Teacher on School App for Parents)
• “Parents are able to set up a parents account if they wish and can then monitor their child’s progress.” (Maths Lead on DoodleLearning)

Encouraging Achievement Sharing and Learning Engagement

Other reviewers tend to emphasise the importance of fostering a culture of shared achievements and learning engagement. By allowing children to showcase their progress and encouraging parental participation, these tools help build a stronger connection between home and school.

• “Allows children to share their learning and achievements.” (Teacher on Purple Mash)
• “Parents are encouraged to read stories with their child and take turn in the reading; it can be a special time together where both parent and child benefit” (Teacher on Forbrain) 
• “Parents have said they like it because of being able to access it on a tablet or phone at home.” (Teacher on Pickatale)

Facilitating Conversations at Home

Teachers also value how EdTech tools encourage meaningful discussions at home, strengthening the connection between school and family life. When parents can actively participate in their child’s learning experience, key concepts can be reinforced and additional support, where needed, can be provided.

• “It is a tool that can support all ages and we frequently ask families to do this together, even as in having a conversation or debate together. If the parent also uses this tool, it increases the understanding of the child’s process which helps the parent feel more in control and more open to engage in child’s struggles.” (Teacher on Forbrain)
• Parents have their own sign up code on Unifrog which enables them to use the platform, remind their children about upcoming Unifrog events, and support children using the Placement tool. We have found that parents use Unifrog to help with careers conversations at home too. (Careers Advisor on Unifrog)

Rethinking Parental Engagement

Interestingly, certain reviewers acknowledge that they — or their school — hadn’t previously thought about parental engagement in connection with that specific tool.

• “I haven’t thought to engage them 🙁 I’ll get right on it!” (Teacher on Britannica School)
• “My school doesn’t use Unifrog to engage the parent community effectively at this point, but I see there being great potential to help educate parents on how they can assist their children in finding future career and education opportunities.” (School Counsellor on Unifrog)

EdTech Impact’s evaluation prompt — which is a core feature of every review — may inspire them to do so.

Concerns About Technological Limitations

Some teachers noted that technological barriers, such as system restrictions and a lack of parental access to certain platforms, have hindered their ability to engage parents effectively. These challenges often stem from limitations in the software itself or changes in digital infrastructure that impact parental involvement.

• “Unfortunately, due to Microsoft not providing parent accounts to either Share Point or Teams, this has decreased parental engagement. Our previous use of Class Charts for example allows parents to access the system.” (Assistant Headteacher on Cloud Design Box)

Schools Actively Encouraging Parental Engagement

Some schools take a proactive role in fostering parental engagement by organising and supporting workshops designed to help parents better support their children’s learning. These sessions give parents hands-on experience with educational tools, helping them feel more confident in assisting their child’s progress at home.

• “We have led parent workshops in school to support parents with using Giglets at home.” (Headteacher on Giglets)
• “Our school has run workshops to show parents Big Maths, what a lesson would look like, an overview of some of the strategies that are taught in Big Maths and how we can use it to identify learning gaps. The workshops were well attended as parents want to understand the approach that the school is using in the teaching of numeracy and maths.” (Headteacher on Big Maths)

Notable Increases in Parental Engagement

When using certain EdTech tools, some teachers have observed a significant rise in parental engagement.

• “81% of parents have created a login.” (Assistant Headteacher on Whizz Education)
• “Many parents have become much more engaged in their children’s learning.” (Deputy Headteacher on DoodleLearning)

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What Research says about Parental Engagement

The Importance of Parental Engagement in Learning

Parental engagement plays a crucial role in children’s academic success, especially in areas such as literacy and maths (Powell et al., 2010; Wilder, 2014). Research shows that when parents are involved from a young age, children’s cognitive and social development can improve, leading to better attainment (Fantuzzo et al., 2004; Van Voorhis et al., 2013). Many schools now rely on educational technology to facilitate this engagement and to reduce teacher workload, although its true impact remains debated (See et al., 2020).

The importance of parental engagement is often highlighted in policies aimed at narrowing the attainment gap (Vincent, 2017). Children from disadvantaged backgrounds typically face lower attainment levels, but it is not entirely clear whether increased parental involvement is a direct cause of higher achievement or if it simply correlates with other factors (See et al., 2020).

Digital Communication Between Schools and Parents

Research on technology-mediated engagement indicates that digital communication can help improve attendance, homework completion, and learning outcomes (See et al., 2020). However, effective engagement requires two-way, personalised, and positive interactions (Selwyn et al., 2011). Merely sending updates to parents does not guarantee genuine involvement. For engagement to be effective, digital platforms must foster two-way dialogue rather than serve as one-way channels for distributing information.

Studies suggest that digital reminders can boost attendance rates, especially for students who are struggling to stay engaged. For younger pupils, mobile apps offering structured activities for parents and children can aid cognitive development. Yet the effectiveness of these approaches depends on how clear and accessible the messages are, as well as how well they are tailored to individual families (See et al., 2020).

Parental Engagement vs. Parental Involvement

While parental involvement often refers to school-led activities, such as attending parent evenings or volunteering, parental engagement implies a more active parental role, in which parents shape the educational experience of their children (Fenton et al., 2017; Reynolds, 2010). Schools must strike a balance: supporting parents who need more guidance, while also encouraging those who readily take the initiative (Lareau & Horvat, 1999; More et al., 2013).

The rise of digital communication has reshaped parent-school relationships. Some argue that increased digitalisation can add bureaucracy to home-school interactions (Head, 2020). Moreover, expectations of parental involvement have intensified over time, placing growing demands on families (Reay, 2005; Head, 2020). These evolving dynamics highlight the need for thoughtful approaches to digital engagement, ones that recognise differences in parents’ capacities, resources, and technological skills.

How Do Parents Engage in Learning?

Parental engagement covers a range of activities, from helping with homework to attending school events, organising extracurricular opportunities, and fostering a supportive learning environment at home (Van Voorhis et al., 2013; Fantuzzo et al., 2000; Latunde, 2017). However, parents and educators may hold differing views on what truly constitutes meaningful engagement (Gross et al., 2020).

In a US-based study, trust and strong parent-teacher relationships were found to be vital, but participants disagreed on the specifics of parent engagement (Gross et al., 2020). These misalignments can create frustration — teachers may feel unsupported, while parents feel excluded (Ishimaru & Takahashi, 2017).

Meanwhile, digital communication, although designed to be efficient, can overwhelm some parents if messages are duplicated, require multiple logins, or if systems are inflexible (Head, 2020). In some cases, platforms can also become tools for surveillance rather than genuine dialogue (Selwyn et al., 2011; Manolev et al., 2019).

Parental Engagement Beyond Communication

Beyond school-based interactions, parental engagement at home is a strong predictor of children’s academic achievement (Harris & Goodall, 2008; Harris et al., 2009). It includes creating a positive emotional climate, having developmentally appropriate learning materials, and offering consistent support (Dearing & Tang, 2010; Baruch & Erstad, 2018). Today, technology forms a growing part of these home learning environments.

Children’s use of digital media continues to rise: a recent study suggests that 75% of children under two now engage with digital devices (McArthur et al., 2022). Experts recommend that parents participate actively in children’s screen time, as shared usage promotes better learning (Taylor et al., 2024). For example, co-reading storybooks on tablets has been shown to enhance language skills (Noble et al., 2019).

A large international survey of 4,600 parents in 19 countries revealed that well-structured digital tools from schools can encourage parental engagement (Osorio-Saez et al., 2021). However, engagement drops if parents see the technology as too difficult or time-consuming to learn and use. This underscores the importance of designing user-friendly, accessible EdTech solutions that cater to varied parental backgrounds.

Implications for EdTech, Teachers, and Schools

EdTech has significant potential to strengthen school-home connections, but its success hinges on thoughtful implementation. Since education extends beyond school walls, teacher training programmes should highlight the importance of engaging parents and offer practical strategies to communicate effectively (Katsarou et al., 2010; Fenton et al., 2017; Howard & Reynolds, 2008).

Crucially, parental engagement is about more than attending school events – it includes supporting children’s learning in everyday contexts (Goodall & Montgomery, 2014). Schools can foster “authentic community engagement” (Fenton et al., 2017) by recognising the diverse experiences and needs of families. Meanwhile, EdTech developers should emphasise user-friendly interfaces, clear navigation, and relevant content so that technology genuinely supports, rather than complicates, home-school relationships (Osorio-Saez et al., 2021).

When technology fosters genuine collaboration — rather than simply pushing out announcements —parents, teachers, and students alike all stand to benefit. By focusing on accessibility, personalisation, and meaningful interaction, EdTech can help nurture the vital link between home and school that underpins children’s success.

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