Introduction
Parents are responsible primarily to bring the children to this world full of challenges. Parents whether mother or father performs all the fundamental responsibilities of their children. These basic duties include mainly clothing, shelter, security and food. These are required at the very initial stage of a child life. Parents are naturally required some stimulating skills to rear these some creatures from hoards to civilized humans and responsible citizens of a society in a broader span. These skills can be fashioned in children either by formal education system or by the character of their parents and surrounding elders. In today’s world, the formal education is opted in all most every where in the world to upgrade the children’s abilities to shine and coop with the upcoming difficulties in life.
As there is an ancient saying” that mother’s lap is the first school for children”, which can be elaborated in a way that children look up to their parents to acquire confidence and certain traits from parents first and then the outer world. The children who spend life in open communication with their parents are likely to be more confident and skill full. The modern world education system is a multi layered system which require utmost commitment from child which is not easy to grip. This challenging system engross the idea of a triangle in this system comprised of child, teacher and parent. This triangle significantly shows that parent involvement is also becoming an indispensable pillar of child education. Parent’s active involvement can assist the better upbringing and modelling of child’s ideal behaviour.
Parental involvement and participation are an ongoing process in child education. Parents get involve with children at home in terms of helping children in home assignments, discussing and participation in school events and celebrations and volunteering in classrooms.
Parental involvement and parental engagement both strive towards the child’s success in life but to understand the parenting first there is dire need to clarify diverse terms in play;
Parental Involvement
Parental involvement is the base of parental engagement. It comprises of participation in school events and activities, building intact and consistent contact with teachers to get study material and teaching methodology and retrieving information about the child’s grade and overall performance in classroom. In case of involvement, teachers have the primary responsibility of teaching lessons to the students and parents have a secondary responsibility only reinforcement of taught lessons at home.
While this relationship between teachers and parents are building with the common goal of child success, parents give all information about child personality which the teachers may not know. So, the teachers are able to advice on the basis of individual learning pace of a child which is more impactful in a long run.
Parental Engagement
Parental engagement is more of an active participation in schools’ activities. It includes the formation of parent- teacher association which works together in more tangible way. These association influence the financial issues, transportation issues and guidelines concerning active parental involvement.
Background
There are various aspects of child rearing and education but one of the most profound is child involvement. Active and positive parental involvement influence and enhance the child learning performance. Conducive home environment builds a positive personality of a child at school and in broader social sense. Positive and active participation by parents’ paly crucial role in bridging up the gaps between school and home. Similarly, parental involvement in academics and extra curricular activities, give the child a clear message of a parent’s interest in child’s life. There are diverse reasons underneath the poor parental involvement in child education which includes less qualified teaching staff, less knowledge of parents regarding education and under privileged financial situation which influence the communication and coordination of parents with schools. Less educated parents abstain from contacting school due to lack of confidence even in case of genuine issues to hide their economic situation. Many studies show that active participation and involvement by the parents come into play when the parents are educated and understand the whole process of child up brining and correlation between school and home. Many issues such as lack of education, lack of access to information and lack financial situation restrains the parents to get involved with child education.
There are different reasons behind lack of parental education in rural and urban areas. Firstly, with special focus on rural areas the society is inclined strongly towards the patriarchy, where mothers are only allowed to participate in household chores and have no say in child education and other financial matters of the family. Mostly, this women folk is less educated and considered to be the ignorant fellows of the society. So, when the children come home from school, mothers have no time, vision or allowance to visit schools and guide the children at home through their homework or assignments.
In urban areas, women are educated and mostly on job. They have full liberty of involvement and participation in child education but the draw back is that fathers have no time to get indulge with the educational or recreational responsibilities of the child. The full burden falls on the shoulders of working mothers which in return fails to participate positively and consistently in child education so the child gets ignored. In this case, parents begin to out source the tuition opportunity but severely fails to keep the track of their child education. This behavior encourages the parents for negative involvement at school and start controlling school for their children’s performance with the stand that they pay heavy fee structures.
In many countries the education depends entirely on Government, where all the requirements are distributed free of cost. There the parental involvement is almost considered to be fashionable. The challenging economic condition where the children are supporting their parents part time cannot meet the school’s expectations at home. Sometimes, the native language is different from the school language so the parents fail to communicate with the school regarding child issues arising in the education for better outcomes.
It sad to observe that based on poor socioeconomic factors and lack of parental cooperation and participation discourages the parents to continue with the school for their child education which is a bigger loss. In general, the lack of parental involvement affects the child education otherwise and the child transform into an adult with low self esteem and confidence, which is again a serious threat to the health society.
Significance of Parental Involvement
Growing experience worldwide in the education sector, it can be suggested that parental involvement and collaboration with school promote significant positive results in child’s achievements at school. When the child has parental support at home and committed involvement at school provokes easy learning and openness towards learning new concepts and experimenting these new concepts at a general level in the society. They are more confident and compete with others without low esteem. Furthermore, the more parents get involved with child at every level in every type of activity like home learning, participation in school’ s celebration, different extra curricular activities and support in decision making the more will be the student’s caliber and academic achievements. Parental involvement keeps the parents aware about the school information, the skills required by the child, child’s emotional needs and the activities happening at school. The parents who prefer to get involve with child struggles to attain knowledge through reading books and internet so they can understand various strategies to deal with any kind of challenge at school or peers and friends. Keeping themselves updated the parents can guide the children through internet programs and books as well. The parental knowledge and involvements can complement the school efforts regarding learning academics or other skills. Hence, parental involvement is imperative for child positive upbringing.
Parental involvement is also considered to be the solution for many educational, behavioral and emotional problems. This linkage with school can be a creative way of transmitting our cultural values into child’s personality. Parental involvement stimulates basic components such as parenting, mutual expectation, communication and supervision. Additionally Parental involvement and collaboration enables the parents to know the progress and short comings of a child and motivates the targeted areas at home by inculcating additional efforts at home. Resultantly, with the adequate availability of parents, they become immediate source of information and continued guidance to address the weaknesses or curiosities of children. The parental involvement acts vice versa that if parents have some challenges regarding child’s education at home they can communicate and discuss it with the school so they can work it out together.
Hence, there are various benefits of parental involvement in child’s education but there are typical parents who are more over protected and controlling is impacting the child negatively. Parents goes to the schools only to pin points the weaknesses of the child and school and throw entire responsibility on the school about the education. Parents does not spend time with their children and ignores to support the children at home and guide them about lessons or human behaviors consequently, they only run a negative discussion and brush their own responsibilities of a child from their shoulders. There are many reasons as a driving force behind that detached spectators, which includes firstly, the parents are not educated themselves and does not know about the requirements of child education. Secondly, in case of private schools, parents believe that they are paying heavy fees to the schools so now it is the responsibility of school to take care of the child education. Thirdly, parents are too much busy in their own jobs and have no time to get involve with child education. In general, parents and schools have no motivation underline the parental involvement.
Components of Parental Involvement
As discussed earlier, the parental involvement is crucial for child education to get better outcomes in education, emotional development, communication etc. It is evident that those parents who have active positive involvement with child education, those children shows high grades, less absenteeism, good behavior and sharp social skills at schools. There are strategies and components which can be thought provoking in parents for the involvement in child education broadly.
- Parenting
Parenting refers the child education and guidance at home. The basic responsibility of parents is to provide safe and sound home environment where the children can happily live and communicate to each other within the family. The prime goal of parents is to raise a happy and healthy human at home, the family environment must be conducive enough where every age of a child to present their ideas and wishes. It is quite understandable that if the family environment is not trustworthy the child will never be able to discuss the challenges, they are facing at school mainly or outside the house. Sometimes, the child behavior and lack of interest in certain lessons are not well explanatory so the school support can initiate the guidance based on certain concrete strategies to experiment. It is strongly advised that the parenting techniques should be kept simple and flexible where the breeze of fresh air should always be welcomed.
- Parent’s Education regarding Parental Involvement
Many parents may not have the awareness about the importance of parental involvement in child up bringing and education or they lack the skills of involvement. The school should arrange orientation sessions for parents where they should discuss the importance of parental participation, creation of conducive learning environment at home, tracking down of class performance and helping child to develop study habits by themselves. All parents may not attend the sessions so the school administration should probe further the reasons which might be language and get it solved because it is the common cause of child successful accomplishments of educational and behavioral goals.
- Effective Communication
Effective communication is always been encouraged anywhere whether organizations, communities, families, school and parents and between two persons of different stand points. Effective two-way communication can help and support the parents to know the targets and goals of their children expected from them at school, which enables the parents to work on the weak areas of children if any exists or required more emphasis through efforts at home. It also encourages the parents to be informed with the daily tasks of the students and the stage they have achieved. This communication can be done through different medium like telephones, on campus visits and letters. This has become more convenient today through WhatsApp broadcast messages or even direct messages. Direct communication also keeps the parents informed about various events planned at the school where they can participate along with their children.
Effective communication also encourages the parents that they can also initiate the communication to clarify any worries or concerns they have. They also discuss the personality of the child or any special needs if the child require to the schools. Generally, schools have the facility of native languages to communicate because many of the parents have language barrier specially if the school language is different from theirs.
The ultimate goal for effective communication between school and parents is to guide the children in a direction where they can present better outcomes to their fullest.
- Personalized Parental Involvement
Sometime the language of school which is mainly English is different from the language of parents. In case of Pakistan, the society is multi cultural and multi linguistic where parents have difficulty to communicate and coordinate with schools even if they prefer it too. To accept the challenge of language barrier and minimizes it, the school should arrange personalized communication system with parents via emails or WhatsApp messages. The experts of bilanguage staff for translators should also be available for onsite communication. Thus, this strategy will build a relationship of trust with school considering the sincerity of school with child but also will be encouraged to participate in school activities and celebrations more frequently.
- Mutual Expectation
This triangle of parents, school and children, which strives to achieve the same goal which is to transform a child in a successful and happy adult, who spread peace around the community. When the mutual expectations are transparent, the way to achieve it becomes easy. The school and teachers at the beginning of all sessions communicate the expectations and set goal which are expected from the parents and students and vice versa. To fulfill these expectations school, parents and children turn every stone down. These expectations are communicated through monthly letters, meetings and emails etc.
- Supervision at Home
Parental involvement as supervisors at home is a process where they can supervise their children and assists the teachers to carry forward the lessons by efforts at homes. For this purpose, every school has a schedule of home works through daily diaries which help parents that what the students are learning during the class in certain span of time. Sometimes, this homework is or project or practical activity based which gives the parents an opportunity of in-depth involvement with children. The homework should be targeted nature rather than only to burden and occupy the children time at home which will motivate the positive attitude towards learning.
Many schools have this strategy of orientation sessions for parents where they give hands on knowledge about the methods and techniques which they will apply in the class learnings with children. Schools also arrange the parent teacher meetings where they openly discuss the child behaviour and learning goals plusses and minuses. These meetings also guide the parents the level of supervision they must perform at home.
In order to improve the child learning outcomes, parents should provide conducive and effective learning environment at home, where children can flourish and bloom to its full strengths.
- Parent – Teacher Associations (PTA)
It is the most active example of parental engagement. Parent Teacher associations exist almost everywhere. The parents should join these parent teacher associations where they can get involved at the decision level. While, the school is devising policies regarding classrooms learnings, home works or other relevant issues, parents can give their opinions. Parents fully understand children’s psyche so they can give their inputs with ground realities. These associations also provide the parents with the opportunity that they can reach to the management to deliberate the financial burden on the parents as well. The ultimate goal of these associations undoubtedly is better children with their better academic outcomes which enables them to join the professions or social areas they prefer.
- Volunteering
Parental volunteering is the support and participation in school functions, fun fairs and different celebrations at school. In case of some financial challenges the parents should also work for fun raising activities on behalf of school management or collaboration. Working closely with the children, the children will get wear off the deep talents and skills of their parents or themselves. Volunteering in fun fairs gives an opportunity to transmit the different cultural preference, historic stories and building communication skills. Teachers should also encourage the parental volunteering in class projects where parents can work together for a project. Parents can be hub of talents and skills where they can influence the young learners in more creative ways which can stimulate the cognitive skills of children. Parents participating in school activities encourage the children the direct communication skill with adult.
Parents can also volunteer as language translators on specific events like parent teacher meeting or historic fairs or multicultural fun days.
Volunteering is not always beneficial for schools but it also gives an opportunity to understand the challenges of school which it faces in class room during lessons. They get sensitize regarding child attention span, their problems at home, their weak areas and poor communication skills. It gives the parents a chance to design a targeted strategy to address these performance threatening issues of children which can compromise the child education.
- Community Work
Many schools have the policy to arrange fun fair or carnivals to support the under privileged staff or community around. Parental involvement in making edible products give the children validation from their parents good deeds of working for others and understanding the challenges of under privileged children.
Conclusion
The prime responsibility lies with school management is to encourage the parents for involvement and participation. The school environment must be friendly and inviting to the parents so they can come forward and participate in the child education. This communication must be through out the year rather than only when the issues arise. This will help to sort out the issue within the same time as it arises. It is to understand the children can only be build in better humans when the triangle of teacher, child and teacher works together with clear understanding that the ultimate goal of better educational outcomes.