Following the nationwide lockdown, one thing is clear: the progress that children have made in terms of their learning varies hugely, further entrenching the educational inequity that exists and which fuels the lifelong social and economic divide. Drawing on research indicating that parental involvement in their child's learning makes a difference…

Contextual approaches to high quality Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) seek to capture the complexity of children's lives, developing pedagogical approaches that are responsive to children's needs and interests. In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic provided a complex layer to the question of what constitutes quality ECEC. A mixed methods…

Attention to children's emotional health and wellbeing (EHWB) has increased over the last decade due to a decline in children and young people's mental health. COVID-19 escalated this need globally as children were subjected to immediate and drastic changes to their education and daily lives. This paper reports on a UK qualitative study exploring…

Just as illness can sometimes heal us, some have speculated an unexpected silver lining of COVID-19 may be an invigoration of a prosocial vision as the 'new normal' necessitates new ways of thinking and doing things differently across society and in preschool. This article explores this and reports survey research completed with preschool…

Parenting a child with Special Educational Needs (SEN) presents numerous challenges for families. For immigrant parents, these challenges can be particularly difficult to overcome when faced with structural, cultural and linguistic barriers. This qualitative study explored the lived experiences of eight Eastern European immigrants parenting a…

This article explores the views of a small group of teachers who specialise in supporting children with Special Educational Needs (SEN). Frequently literature exploring the relationship between parents and teachers of children with SEN uses language which is confrontational, even aggressive. This research, based within a specialist school in…

The closure of school buildings due to COVID-19 created a challenge for parents and teachers supporting children's remote learning. This paper presents findings of a study that explored whether parents of children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) experienced an unusually challenging period and what obstacles they faced. An…

The COVID-19 school closures presented an unprecedented challenge to primary education on a global scale, with teachers, parents, and children having to rapidly adjust to a remote learning environment, and with concerns that this would exacerbate educational inequalities. Parental engagement has been widely acknowledged to have a positive impact…

Teaching is understood to be a highly stressful profession. In England, workload, high-stakes accountability policies and pupil behaviour are often cited as stressors that contribute to teachers' decisions to leave posts in the state-funded sector. Many of these teachers leave state teaching to take jobs in private schools, but very little is…

Although the area of parental involvement in education is well researched, much less is known about how parents and teachers might work together to cultivate desirable character virtues in their children/pupils. This article considers three potential barriers to parents/teachers forming such partnerships: i) differing views on the importance of…

This conceptual study seeks to understand parent and teacher perceptions of "effective" home-school partnerships across three secondary schools in England, before problematising these normative understandings. Currently there is little research into home-school partnerships at a secondary level in the UK, and the policy environment is…

Early years practitioners are central to UK government policy in alleviating poverty in early childhood. The significant level and rise in child poverty rates suggest that their role is becoming increasingly important in supporting families on low incomes. Paradoxically, cuts to children's services under austerity policies and the low pay and…

Parent-practitioner engagement in the early years has become a key policy in remediating the negative effects of poverty upon children's early educational outcomes. Although this approach is shared across several developed countries, there has been limited attention upon how practitioners think about poverty and their engagement with parents in…

The school closures necessitated by the COVID-19 pandemic created a rapid shift to alternative modes of educational delivery, primarily online learning and teacher-supported home-schooling. This shift has revealed deep inequities in education systems worldwide, as many children lost access to teachers and schooling. An effective response to these…

This article argues that neoliberal and neoconservative schooling policies in England legitimise a long-standing neglect of cultural difference in schools, and are having a particularly damaging effect on Muslim children's experience of schooling. It offers evidence that relationships between teachers and Muslim families in particular may be…