Supporting Students and building relationships with their families

The Edison Design embodies the results of a radical rethink of support structures and processes. Fully inclusive in its approach, the Design seeks to enhance each classroom teacher's confidence and ability to manage challenging support situations. Through the development of a Student and Family Support Team, the Design provides an extensive professional capability to support teachers, students and families, and to build support capacity by working alongside external agencies.

The Design recognises the value of actively involving parents and communities in their children's learning and provides tools and processes that develop and foster timely collaboration.

Building Stronger Family Family-School Relationships

Schools understand the value of actively involving their parents and communities in their children's learning. The challenge for many schools is gaining a greater participation in this process. The Edison Design enables schools to make community partnerships more meaningful through:

• a systematic approach to home-school communication
  
• active family engagement in children's learning
• tools that develop and foster timely collaboration

To help schools achieve this, the Design contains these ingredients:

• Termly Learning Conferences between teachers, learners and parents/carers in which a Student Learning Profile forms the basis for discussion and planning. The conferences are underpinned by in-depth data on the students generated by the Assessment for Learning software tools, so that teachers, learners and parents can track progress and agree goals.
  
• A Student and Family Support Team that gives teachers the resources to support challenging students and increases the school's capacity to work alongside support agencies. The team provides a framework that more effectively brings together staff supporting vulnerable children.
  
• An Edison Family Support Adviser who supports the school in establishing these systems and structures and who provides ongoing problem resolution and professional development support.