Judith Thompson

Judith Thompson, Chair of Trustees of the Pre-school Learning Alliance

When I was a young and very inexperienced teacher the thing I dreaded the most, well, after teaching poetry to 3C on a Friday afternoon, the thing that I dreaded most — was parents evening.

Parents would come, expecting me to be an expert in their children. And of course I wasn’t, because I was only seeing them in a group of 40, three times a week, for half an hour at a time, during term time.

And the children I knew rather better, you know the ones, the ones that challenge us — of course, their parents didn’t come. My difficulties arose from a very imperfect understanding, one shared by the school where I worked, a very imperfect understanding of what partnership with parents actually meant.

Of course now I do know a great deal more about it. Partly because I’m a parent and grandparent, but also because I’ve been part of the Pre-school Learning Alliance for lots and lots of years. And the Pre-school Learning Alliance is a charity that puts right at the heart of its work, a partnership with parents that encourages them and enables them, not just to be partners, not even just to be equal partners, but to take their rightful role as the senior partner in the development and education of their children.

It’s really good to have an opportunity to spend some time thinking about this topic. And to have people on our panel of speakers who will be able to help us look again and afresh at this most important topic. Because however much we know about this, partnerships are difficult and require constant working and refreshment if they are to do all that we hope for.