Quick Answer: The Education Endowment Foundation updated its Teaching and Learning Toolkit in May 2025 and confirmed that parental engagement adds an average of four months of additional academic progress per year for primary-age learners. The EEF also notes gains in wellbeing, behaviour, and attendance, but stresses that results depend on careful planning and consistent two-way communication.

Last reviewed: 6 July 2026

Four months of additional academic progress per year, without changing the curriculum or adding instructional hours. That is what international research associates with a specific form of parental engagement, according to the Education Endowment Foundation's Teaching and Learning Toolkit, updated on May 21, 2025.

The EEF is a UK-based non-profit that funds and synthesises research on educational interventions. Its Toolkit is used by thousands of schools across the United Kingdom and serves as an international reference for evidence-based decisions in education. In May 2025, the EEF announced an update to ten strands of its Toolkit, including the strand on parental engagement.

What does the EEF mean by "parental engagement"?

The term can be vague. The EEF defines it precisely in its Supporting Parents guidance report: parental engagement refers to actions families take at home to support their child's learning, not just their attendance at parent nights or their participation on school committees.

This distinction matters. Research synthesised by the EEF shows that one-off events (information evenings, general newsletters, communications sent only when a problem arises) have a limited effect on academic outcomes. It is regular, two-way communication focused on specific learning that produces the four-month gap.

The EEF is clear that this effect depends on the quality of the design. The Toolkit states explicitly: "developing effective parental engagement is challenging and needs careful planning, monitoring and evaluation." The communication channel alone is not enough. What matters is what the teacher chooses to share and whether families can respond.

How does this translate into a real primary classroom in Canada?

The EEF identifies several practices that research consistently links to measurable gains. Two come up repeatedly in the literature:

Weekly action-oriented summaries. A short message, in the family's home language, describing what the student worked on that week and suggesting one concrete action for home. Not a progress report, but an invitation to continue the learning: a question to discuss at dinner, five minutes of reading, a vocabulary word to look up together.

A space for families to respond. What the EEF calls "two-way" means the communication is not one-directional. Families need to be able to share what is and is not working, without this creating an administrative burden for the teacher.

For a Grade 2 teacher in British Columbia or a Grade 4 teacher in Quebec, this can look like a five-sentence summary sent every Friday, in each family's home language, with one suggested action for the weekend. This simple pattern is exactly the type of intervention the EEF evidence rewards.

LinoClass is built to structure this kind of communication without surveilling the child at home. Teachers can send these family summaries in a few minutes each week. See how it works on the features page.

What does the research say about the other benefits of parental engagement?

The four months of additional progress is the most cited figure, but the EEF's Supporting Parents guidance documents several other effects noted across international studies:

  • Student wellbeing. Children whose parents are engaged in their schooling show higher indicators of emotional wellbeing, according to the data the EEF analysed.
  • Classroom behaviour. Regular communication between school and family is associated with a reduction in disruptive behaviour.
  • Attendance. Families who are better informed about what is happening in class tend to prioritise daily attendance more consistently.

These effects are not independent of each other. A student who knows their parents are actively interested in what they are learning tends to engage more with their schoolwork. This reinforcing pattern is documented across several of the studies the EEF synthesised.

Why does the EEF emphasise design and planning so strongly?

This is the most important nuance in the May 2025 update. The EEF is explicit: parental engagement interventions that are not carefully planned may produce no effect at all, or even a negative effect if they create anxiety in families already under pressure.

The EEF's Supporting Parents guidance identifies several conditions for effective engagement:

  1. Communication must be accessible to families whose home language is not English or French.
  2. It must not demand resources that families do not have (time, materials, a quiet space).
  3. It must be focused on current learning, not general concerns or administrative reminders.
  4. It must allow families to respond to the school, without pressure.

These conditions are not met by a general-purpose messaging app, or by a mass email sent at the end of the month. They require a structure designed specifically for the school-family relationship.

Do all families benefit equally from parental engagement?

Research synthesised by the EEF indicates that students from disadvantaged backgrounds tend to benefit more from well-designed parental engagement than other students do. This differential effect is significant: it suggests that parental engagement is not just a bonus for already-involved families, but an intervention that can potentially reduce educational inequality.

In Canada, this carries particular weight in contexts with high linguistic diversity. A summary sent in the family's home language, even a brief one, often makes the difference between a communication that reaches parents and one that is set aside.

The EEF does not prescribe a specific tool. It prescribes an approach. If you want to see what structured, two-way communication can look like at scale, the article on Singapore's Parents Gateway describes a model that shares several of the principles the EEF recommends.

A note on workload

One of the most common objections from primary school teachers is this: "I am already stretched. How do I add a layer of weekly communication?"

The EEF's response, translated into practical terms, is that the upfront investment in design (deciding on format, frequency, and a standard template) is what makes the practice sustainable long-term. A teacher who decides in September that every Friday she sends a five-sentence summary with one suggested action does not have to reinvent the approach each week.

The effort is in the setup, not in the ongoing maintenance. And four months of additional progress represents a real return on that initial investment.

LinoClass helps teachers send structured family summaries in minutes each week.

See the features

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the EEF Teaching and Learning Toolkit?

The Teaching and Learning Toolkit is an online resource managed by the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF), a UK-based non-profit organisation. It synthesises hundreds of studies on educational interventions and assigns each one an estimate of effect measured in "months of additional progress per year." The current version was partially updated on May 21, 2025, covering ten strands including parental engagement. The Toolkit is available free on the EEF website and is used as a reference by school systems in the United Kingdom, Australia, and other English-speaking countries.

Do the four months of progress apply automatically to every student?

No. The estimate of +4 months is an average calculated across all the studies analysed. It means that, across the full set of parental engagement interventions studied, students who benefited from a well-designed approach progressed on average four months more than their peers in control groups. Some studies show larger effects, others smaller. The EEF is clear on this point: the quality of the intervention design is the determining factor, not the presence of any particular tool.

How does the EEF define "effective" parental engagement?

The EEF distinguishes general parental engagement (attending school events, receiving newsletters) from learning-focused engagement. Effective engagement, according to its research, involves regular, two-way communication about what the student is specifically learning, paired with concrete suggestions for what the family can do. It is not about monitoring what the child does at home, but about maintaining a connection between what happens in the classroom and what happens at home.

Do I need to track what students do at home for this to work?

No, and the EEF is clear on this point. Monitoring the child's activity at home is not a component of effective parental engagement. What matters is that the family is informed and able to act, not that they report back on what the student did. A parent who asks a question at dinner about the week's reading is fully playing their role, even without sending a summary to the teacher.

Is this approach suitable for families whose home language is not English or French?

This is precisely where it matters most. The EEF's Supporting Parents guidance stresses linguistic accessibility as a condition for effectiveness. Families who are not proficient in the language of instruction are often the least reached by standard school communications, and yet they are the ones whose engagement can have the greatest impact on student outcomes. Short, clear summaries in the family's home language are the format the research consistently favours.

Last reviewed: 6 July 2026

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