Parental support is critical for young children’s language and literacy development. It is important that teachers are aware of this parental role. Particularly in the case of lower‐educated parents, teachers can improve their education when they engage parents in partnerships to support young children’s language development. These parents are often challenged to provide a rich Home Language Environment (HLE) with opportunities for interaction and using language. However, teachers have little experience in building partnerships with lower‐educated parents. We designed a series of interventions to establish partnerships between school and lower‐educated parents and to encourage rich parent‐child interactions. In close collaboration with teachers, principals and parents, we evaluated the application of these interventions using interviews, questionnaires and classroom observations. The results show that most teachers implemented the interventions in their classroom as intended. However, some teachers experienced problems with modelling activities to parents and stimulating parents to follow their child’s initiative. Our findings also show that parents increased their participation in parent‐child activities, showed more interactive behaviour with their child and were positive about their participation in the programme and its relevance. Furthermore, the school teams saw opportunities for continuing to work with the programme. Nevertheless, we also observed practical problems such as insufficient preparation of teachers for working with parents during pre‐service teacher education and a lack of supportive school policy. Finally, we examine how the prototype can be better adapted to the needs and resources of teachers and lower‐educated parents.

Contact with parents in urban pre-vocational educationThe guidance from parents of their children at home and the cooperation between school and parents can contribute to the success of students in school. This is especially important for pupils in urban contexts. Unfortunately, in urban contexts barriers exist that can hinder the relationship between school and parents. Furthermore, little is known on how school can facilitate parents in guiding their children at home, especially in the urban context. In this qualitative field-study the effect of different types of contact moments on a positive relationship with parents and the facilitation of parents to support their child at home is examined at four urban schools for pre-vocational education. The results of this study suggest that in the type of contact moments that schools currently use several issues hinder the establishment of a positive relationship with parents; organisational issues seem to interfere with the welcoming of the parents, there are few moments in which teachers and parents can get acquainted with each other, there is not much reciprocity and the role of the pupil in the contact between school and parents is often unclear. To facilitate parents in the guidance of the students at home, more attention is needed for the talents of the student in order to provide parents with more tools to encourage their children. Furthermore, schools offer parents with few concrete tools to support their children in their study process and in making choices regarding their (school)career. Several types of contact moments have been observed that offer more possibilities to realize a relationship with parents and/or facilitate the support of their children at home and overcome some of the previously mentioned issues. However, these types of contact are less prevailing in schools.

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