GEC Homes is the Global Equality Collective’s research programme focused on parent and carer voice in education.
“I’ve experienced the education system as a ‘disadvantaged’ student, a teacher, and now a SEND parent. One thing is clear: to truly change outcomes, we need to build systems where parents and carers are heard on their terms. With GEC Homes, we’re bringing together families, leaders, and experts to create a framework and technology that turns listening into meaningful action — driven by empathy, not sympathy.”
Dr Nicole Ponsford, Founding CEO, GEC
Let’s build an education system
that listens, understands
and acts with empathy.
Method
The development of the Parent & Carer Inclusion Index involved a mixed-methods research process, including:
Focus groups with parent
carers and those with lived expertise
Collaborative research workshops
One-to-one interviews
Image by the wonderfully talented Eliza Fricker of Missing the Mark
The Global Equality Collective (GEC) has spent several years developing Kaleidoscopic Data, an approach designed to surface lived experiences within education systems that are often invisible within traditional metrics.
To date, this work has focused primarily on student and staff voice, helping schools and system leaders better understand patterns relating to belonging, inclusion and wellbeing.
The development of our Parent & Carer Inclusion Index represents the next stage of this research, recognising that families hold important insight into how education systems operate around children and young people. Following this we will bring Parent and Carer voice into the GEC Platform.
This work is grounded in a principle widely used within participatory research:
Understanding how families experience their relationships with schools is therefore a critical part of understanding the broader ecology of education systems.
Parent and Carer Voice: The Why? Extending the Evidence Base
Research context
Research on parental engagement and involvement has long demonstrated the importance of relationships between families and schools in supporting children’s learning (Epstein, 2011; Desforges & Abouchaar, 2003).
Sociological studies have also shown that families experience education systems differently depending on their social context, with factors such as class, culture and institutional expectations shaping interactions between parents and schools (Crozier & Davies, 2007; Lareau, 2011).
In parallel, research within SEND and disability studies has documented the complex journeys many families navigate when seeking appropriate support for their children (Runswick-Cole & Goodley, 2013).
While these studies provide valuable insight, much of the literature is based on small qualitative samples, while national surveys of parents typically involve 1,000–2,000 respondents and often focus on general satisfaction with schools.
Relatively little research combines:
• large-scale parent voice data
• lived experience insight
• intersectional interpretation
• practitioner knowledge
within a single dataset.
A Kaleidoscopic Data approach
The Parent & Carer Inclusion Index seeks to extend this evidence base by applying the Kaleidoscopic Data framework, developed through the doctoral research of Dr Nicole Ponsford.
This approach combines:
quantitative survey data
qualitative lived-experience insights
practitioner interpretation through the GEC Circle
contextual understanding from school leaders and education experts
By placing parent voice alongside student and staff voice, the project aims to generate a more complete understanding of how belonging, trust and engagement are shaped within education systems.
Who has been involved?
Parents and Carers
Sharing their lived experiences to inform the project.
School and Trust Leaders
Helping to shape a framework that works in real-world contexts.
The GEC Circle of Inclusion Experts
Providing expert guidance on inclusion and engagement practices.
In Partnership with SquarePeg
SquarePeg is our main partner in this research project due to their depth of experience, wide community and shared vision.
Also involved are:
Why Now?
Why this work matters now
Current national conversations about education frequently focus on indicators such as attendance, behaviour and attainment.
While these measures are important, they often capture the outcomes of disengagement rather than the conditions that produce it.
Understanding how families experience their relationships with schools is therefore an important part of moving the conversation upstream, toward the conditions that enable children and young people to thrive.
This survey was created to help surface those experiences ethically, thoughtfully and at scale. By listening directly to parents and carers, the research aims to better understand the realities that families navigate every day — including belonging, communication, trust, support and inclusion.
These insights form part of the GEC’s wider commitment to using Kaleidoscopic Data to humanise educational data, ensuring that lived experience sits alongside traditional metrics to support more intentional, relational and inclusive educational practice.
Thank you to the wonderful people and organisations that have fed into
our research and development of our national GEC Parent and Carer Voice survey.
Parents and Carers
New for Summer 2026: The Top 10 Factors Shaping Parent and Carer Experience of School.
Top-ranked area:
Support
More than half of parents and carers report having to navigate support systems independently before help is offered.
“I had to figure everything out myself.” (SEND Parent, Secondary)
Kaleidoscopic Data: Parents and carers of children with SEND and non-visible disabilities report significantly higher support fatigue. Families navigating multiple systems describe inconsistent experiences across education and external services. Lower-income households report additional barriers accessing timely support.
GEC View: Support becomes inequitable when access depends on parental capacity, confidence or persistence.
Download the full Index to see the most urgent inclusion issues for parents and carers, students, staff—identified from 35,000 voices this Summer Term and ranked using Kaleidoscopic Data.
Thank you to every parent and carer
who shared their experiences, reflections and insights.
Your voices have already helped shape the first national Parent and Carer Inclusion Index, bringing family perspectives alongside staff and student voice for the first time. Together, these insights now represent more than 500,000 families and contribute to one of the largest independent lived-experience datasets exploring inclusion, belonging, wellbeing and engagement across education.
This milestone is particularly important to us because meaningful inclusion cannot be understood through a single lens. By listening to students, staff and families together, we gain a richer and more complete understanding of what education feels like for the communities it serves.
Over the coming months, the GEC Research Team will continue to analyse the findings using our Kaleidoscopic Data methodology, ethically combining quantitative trends with lived experience to surface the nuances, challenges and opportunities that traditional data often misses.
These insights will directly inform the development of the Parent and Carer Voice element of the GEC Platform, planned for 2026/27. This next stage will enable schools, trusts and organisations to listen to, understand and act upon parent and carer experiences alongside staff and student voice, creating a more complete picture of inclusion, belonging and engagement across their communities.
The findings will also continue to inform future editions of the Inclusion Index, national research reports, practical resources and evidence-informed recommendations for schools, trusts, local authorities and policy leaders.
We are deeply grateful to everyone who trusted us with their voice.
Because inclusion is not something done to families.
It must be built with them.