Parents have huge confidence in schools, but they can see the system straining

Most of us who are parents have strong feelings about our children’s education.

We see the system up close every day. The teachers who go the extra mile, the school trips paid for in instalments, the late-night reminders about forgotten homework, the parent WhatsApp chats, the moments of pride and the moments of worry.

And yet, for all the talk about education in this country, parents’ voices are strangely absent from national debates.

We hear a lot from experts, from unions, from policymakers – and rightly so – but far less from the people who send nine million children through school gates every morning.

During the pandemic, it became starkly clear to me just how little structured space there was for parents’ voices in national decision-making.

Whatever your views on school closures or home learning, national decisions were being made at pace and parents were mostly on the sidelines. We ask parents for feedback at school level, but at national level their insight is almost entirely missing.

In other public services, this gap simply doesn’t exist. Patients are routinely surveyed and consulted in the NHS, and user insight is built into national decision-making.

No way of understanding experiences at scale

It has always struck me as odd that in education – where parents are such central partners and such a critical influence in children’s lives – we have no equivalent way of understanding their experiences at scale.

That realisation became the seed for the Parent Voice Project. I founded the project to create a systematic and credible way for parents’ views to be heard at a national level.

Delivered in partnership with Public First, and supported by an expert advisory group of school and system leaders alongside a parent steering group, the project is designed to listen carefully to parents at scale.

Over the coming year, we will publish three reports based on large-scale polling and focus groups.

This week we published the first of those reports, based on the largest survey of parents in England that we’re aware of – more than 6,000 parents from every region, background and phase, supported by focus groups to understand the ‘why’ behind their answers.

The results paint a picture that feels both reassuring and urgently important.

Parents have huge confidence in schools

First, the reassurance. Parents have a huge amount of confidence in their children’s schools.

The vast majority believe their child receives a high- or very high-quality education, and they speak incredibly warmly about teachers. In the focus groups, the respect and gratitude towards school staff came through again and again.

But that warmth sits alongside a clear, and at times uncomfortable, message. Parents can see the system straining behind the scenes. They report being asked for financial contributions – not just for extras, but for basics.

Some described the cost of uniform, trips and meals eating into family budgets. Lower-income parents in particular are feeling the squeeze most sharply – and these same parents are also less likely to rate their child’s education as high or very high-quality overall.

These pressures don’t just appear on spreadsheets. They show up in lunchboxes, in difficult choices, in what children can and can’t take part in.

And some of the national debates look very different from a parent’s perspective.

Take school choice. Parents told us that when choosing a school, they start with practical realities – proximity, reputation in the community, whether a school feels like a good fit.

Formal measures like Ofsted reports and performance tables are part of the picture, but for most parents they are one source of information among many.

It’s a reminder that families weigh up a range of factors, and that their decisions are rooted in what they know about their child and their local context.

We want to work with the system

Across all of this, what struck me most was that parents want to work with the system, not against it. They recognise the challenges schools face. They understand how stretched staff feel. And they care deeply about their children’s education.

What comes through strongly is a real reservoir of goodwill towards schools and teachers – one that the system does not always recognise, and does not always make enough use of.

Parents want to contribute constructively, but they also want national debates to reflect the realities they navigate every day.

This report is the first in a three-part series. Over this academic year, we will explore inclusion, attendance, wellbeing and parental engagement.

My hope is that this work enriches the conversation, providing a fresh perspective and a renewed focus on parents as partners – all in service of achieving great outcomes and opportunities for children.