At Foxfield Primary School, traditional approaches to family engagement simply don't work. Instead of academic meetings that parents don't attend, co-head teacher Megan Minnett and her team have built engagement around food, relationships, and consistent daily presence that meets families where they are.

The school serves a diverse community, and the leadership team learned that conventional parent engagement strategies weren't effective.

Instead, the school centres engagement around three major food-focused community events: winter, Easter, and summer festival. These consistently draw large crowds.

"Any community event... they're big at Foxfield... Anytime food's involved, our parents come in."

Rather than separate information meetings, important communications happen through stalls at these popular events.

"At our bigger events we have stalls. So if it's around admissions our admissions manager will have a stall and parents will come that way. That's our way to reach them."

Daily gate presence by leadership creates consistent touchpoints for relationship building and prevents issues from escalating.

"We're on the gates every day... You pick up, you feel it, you hear it - come in, what's the matter?"

This consistent presence has virtually eliminated formal complaints over five years.

The school's diverse senior leadership team enables more effective engagement with different community groups.

"Within our leadership team, the Deputy Head is Somali and we have a big Somali community... Our assistant head is Nigerian. We have a huge Nigerian community. For children and for the families to see that representation at senior leadership level, we use that to our advantage."

The school actively works to understand individual family stories and circumstances rather than making assumptions.

The approach has built strong community loyalty, with Foxfield receiving the most applications of any Greenwich primary school through word-of-mouth reputation. In the TEP survey, staff would also recommend the school for their children, scoring 8.6/10 on this question, putting them +1.2 above national benchmark.  

Key strategies:

• Food-centered community events rather than traditional academic meetings

• Daily gate presence by leadership for relationship building and early intervention

• Diverse senior leadership team reflecting community demographics

• Information sharing embedded within popular social events