Are School Newsletters Easy to Understand at Home, and Why Does This Matter?

ABSTRACT Effective communication between schools and homes is an obligation of schools, enhancing home involvement and thus student learning. However, many parents and guardians have low English reading comprehension, making the understanding of complex English written text challenging. This research sought to determine if a sample of school newsletters met a readability benchmark aligned with expectations for sixth grade reading comprehension attainment designated for optimal understanding in the general public. Analysis of a sample of 100 newsletters found that with a median readability at 12th grade, all newsletters were substantially more complex than the readability benchmark. It was also found that newsletters produced for homes in contexts of relative socioeducational disadvantage linked with lower English reading comprehension were only very slightly easier to read on average, while still being far higher than the benchmark. This suggests that those producing newsletters in these schools may be giving limited consideration to their accessibility relative to context and audience. Findings suggest that schools should audit the complexity of their newsletters using free and accessible platforms and make adjustments to their complexity if they are found to exceed readability benchmarks to optimise communication with diverse homes, with related implications for professional development in this skillset.