<< Background >>The PARENTS ENGAGE project will enhance the teachers’ capacities to design effective responses for school - family links, informing refugee parents to be actively involved in their children education. For this to be achieved, PARENTS ENGAGE is addressing the multiple needs of its target groups, as follows:a) Teachers: Considering the increased flow of migrant and refugee populations since 2015 in Europe, schoolteachers struggle to work in multicultural environments, by improving the education of disadvantaged migrant and refugee students being in peril of ESL. As such, school staff needs to respond effectively to these challenges and be trained in multicultural environments on how to support these students and their parents. The project emphasizes on the provision of consolidated tools and training material for teacher staff, effectively supporting their professional development. b) Parents: Migrant and refugee parents’ participation in school life is hindered through multiple barriers and challenges within educationa and society. There is often less engagement by them in school processes and in their children education while many migrant students lag behind in educational achievements. Strengthening parental inclusion in local structures could enhance their involvement in their children’ education. PARENTS ENGAGE will focus on this potential, by leveraging the knowledge and initiatives already carried out by CSOs in collaboration with schools on parents’ engagement in school education and in schools system. c) Students: migrant and refugee children tend to show lower academic performance compared to non-migrant children or are more likely drop out school. Thus, they need a safe and inclusive environment enabling their school life’s integration. The active parental involvement can lead to higher academic success, more time spent on homework, and fewer discipline problems, with all features remedying disadvantage and tackle students’ Early School Leaving (ESL). Hence, the enhancement of migrant children’ education, by focusing on educational interventions that increase the refugee parents’ involvement in their children education, is a primary aspiration of the PARENTS ENGAGE project.<< Objectives >>PARENTS ENGAGE aims at: reinforcing teachers’ skills in fostering productive relations with migrant and refugee families, supporting migrant and refugee parents to be involved at their children’s schools,improving education and tackling ESL and disadvantaged migrant and refugee children in primary and secondary education. Since parental engagement can be a vital step towards this direction, the core objectives of the project are:1) to capitalise on the experiential knowledge of CSOs working with migrants and refugees by researching and evaluating their relevant practices,2) to provide evidence-based teacher training for enabling teachers to strengthen parental engagement at school so as to improve the academic performance of children and avoid ESL,3) to reach out migrant and refugee parents directly, providing tailored support materials for increasing their school engagement.<< Implementation >>PARENTS ENGAGE has envisaged to implement the following activities:Result 1 (Collection and analysis of innovative initiatives engaging migrant and refugee parents in school life): A1: Mapping on identification and collection of innovative practices developed by CSOs, aiming at increasing the parental engagement in children’s education. In light of ensuring a more comprehensive approach, relevant practices will be explored at a school level in the participating countries; A2: Assessment and categorization of practices based on concrete criteria, so as to further showcase their characteristics, and elements which facilitate the refugee and migrant parents’ engagement in their children’ school life. Result 2 (PARENTS ENGAGE Online Platform with interactive training materials for teachers): Α1: Development of PARENTS ENGAGE Online Platform with interactive training materials for teachers; A2: good practice case studies, enabling the familiarization of both teachers and refugee and migrant parents with them; A3:Training materials designed for teachers supporting them in adopting innovative practices of parental engagement; A4: Information Packages for parents; A5: a small-scale pilot in schools. Result 3 (PARENTS ENGAGE Mobile application for parents): A1: Determination of User Functions; A2: Determination of application contents; A3:Program Interface Decision; A4:Program Interface Design; A5:Database Design; A6:Determination of database associations; A7:Integration of the interface into the program; A8: Programming user functions and general functions of the program; A9: Testing the program; A10: Elimination of errors considering feedback received from parents; A11: If necessary, making necessary changes in the database and program interface; A12: Translations in local languages for facilitating that this result will be available on a multilingual basis, while a final Test shall also be implemented during the Multiplier Events.Result 4 (Digital storytelling of teachers and migrant and refugee parents’ experiences with parental engagement in school): A1: Provision of guidelines on the strategy to be followed in each of the participating in the consortium countries; A2: Production of digital storytelling videos in close collaboration with parents and teachers in each participating country. Result 5 (Policy Recommendations for migrant and refugee parents engagement in schools): A1: a relevant desk research will be conducted in each partner country; A2: analysis of data and synthesis of ideas, consultations and deliberations with relevant stakeholders, publication on the project’s platform, and dissemination plans to promote the reports to governmental and EU-level policymakers.<< Results >>In terms of quantitative results, the project’s targets, growing also through dissemination activities, are the following: - PARENTS ENGAGE will directly reach out to 500 students of primary and secondary education in the participating countries and their parents.- At least 28 in-service teachers will be directly trained through the PARENTS ENGAGE teachers training and learning activities.- More than 500 teachers and school heads will be reached through the Open Education Resources available through the project’s online platform (R2).Regarding qualitative results, the project will benefit students’ academic and social experience, capacity to continue the school and even seek further education as also their sense of belonging to school community and society. As for parents’ capacity to become more engaged in children’ education, the materials and support provided will make them feel more empowered and enabled to partake in school activities. In addition, two main types of outcomes will be produced:1) Reports and studies: current practices will be researched for the gathering any developed wisdom and applied innovations into a comprehensive mapping of innovative practices in multicultural classrooms with a specialised focus on parental engagement (R1), the most challenging but necessary area of practice (BRYCS, 2018). For this purpose, the practices of CSOs will be scouted for innovative practices. Ultimately, a policy report with recommendations (R5) will be produced to support policymakers in designing effective policies.2) Innovative teacher training and parental engagement materials: PARENTS ENGAGE will develop a useful and comprehensive set of interactive online training materials for teachers (R2) who need to develop their skills in working closer with migrant and refugees for their students’ benefit and for tackling ESL. Also, a detailed and easily accessible set of guides through an Information Package for parents (R2) (translated in all partner languages) but also a mobile application (R3) to navigate them into the school system to be empowered to better support their children education will be developed during the project. Finally, a set of audiovisual materials (R4) will be produced, inspired by the ‘digital storytelling’ approach, whereby participating parents and teachers will share their experiences with the PARENTS ENGAGE program and how school-level parental engagement affected their lives.