ABSTRACT
Engaging with difficult-to-engage parents – also sometimes referred to as hard-to-reach
parents – can be challenging for many schools. Unfortunately, for some families engaging with
school may not be as straightforward as it may seem for others, due to a number of influenc-
ing factors. The term ‘difficult to engage’ is used to describe parents who may be difficult to
reach or involve in school and their child’s education. Desforges and Abouchaar (2003) identi-
fied the following factors as influencing home-school relationships: social class, maternal level
of education, material deprivation, maternal psychosocial health, single-parent status and, to
a lesser degree, family ethnicity. It is important that schools are persistent when wanting to
involve hard-to-reach parents (Aronson 1996), and that they understand these barriers and
are able ‘to see the world through the eyes of parents who do not fit the norm’ (Crozier and
Davies 2005) in order to create effective partnerships to aid their children’s education.
