Related Articles
Why Is Parental Involvement In Schools Important – It’s hard to believe that summer is over, but as students head back to school, parents have a fresh, new opportunity to bond with their children’s teachers! That’s why we asked educators what exactly they want to hear from you.
Before we get into the questions teachers think you should ask, let’s get into the facts about family engagement. When parents are involved in their child’s education, they can supercharge the work of teachers to promote student learning, curiosity, and success.
Why Is Parental Involvement In Schools Important
In fact, when it comes to academic success, it matters most for our youngest students and perhaps even more than homework help for high school students.
How Involved Are Parents In Their Children’s Learning? Mics6 Data Reveal Critical Insights
That’s what Child Trends, a nonprofit and nonpartisan research center that studies child development to help children learn and grow better and stronger, discovered in 2013. That fall, they released a landmark report on the correlation between parental involvement and student achievement that found students with parents involved in their education:
The report also found that “students perform better in school if their fathers and mothers are involved, regardless of whether the father lives with the student or not.”
The Child Trends report also shows that parental involvement isn’t just good for students – it’s good for whole families and even teachers. For example, consider these observations:
The easiest way to get involved? Talk to your child’s teacher. Whether it’s at an open house or a parent-teacher conference, create a line of communication. And when you do, here are the questions Georgia teachers told us they’d like you to ask:
Building A Parent School Relationship
The teachers hope you will share the information too. They want to know your goals for your child during the school year, your concerns, and if your child has a homework and reading routine after school.
Most teachers and schools can’t wait for you as a parent to get them involved in helping your child learn. However, we also know that sometimes it is not that easy. Some parents face barriers or may feel intimidated when school jargon is complicated, if they have multiple jobs or non-traditional work hours, if English is not their first language, or if they have had complicated experiences with the district in the past. If you face any of these barriers (or know someone who does), let us know how you think schools can remove them.
Steven is the state manager for GeorgiaCAN. In addition to working diligently for children in Georgia, she enjoys checking out local record stores, gardening, and trying new recipes. It is common knowledge that parents play a key role in a child’s education – research shows that parental involvement in a child’s education increases well-being and confidence and is important for academic progress. With school closures due to the global COVID-19 pandemic affecting an estimated 1.58 billion children in more than 180 countries, the importance of parental involvement in education has suddenly increased dramatically.
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/mother-and-child-waving-to-teacher-181214749-593e1b175f9b58d58a7a343e.jpg?strip=all "Why Is Parental Involvement In Schools Important")
Internationally comparable parental participation and its impact on children’s education is extremely limited. To address this critical gap, Round 6 of the UNICEF-supported Multiple Indicator Survey (MICS6) includes a new module on parental involvement. It assesses two types of parental involvement – at home and at school – using a questionnaire dedicated to collecting information for children aged 5 to 17 at the household level. A selection of preliminary findings from this module are discussed below.
Activities To Involve Families
One finding from countries with available MICS6 is that there is wide variation in the levels of parental involvement in school, which largely depends on whether schools have governing boards in which parents can participate. In countries such as Zimbabwe and the Kyrgyz Republic, almost all children attend board-governed schools, while in Punjab (Pakistan) and Tunisia, less than 20 percent of children attend board-governed schools.
However, the presence of the board of directors does not mean the participation of all parents. In countries with similar percentages of children attending schools with governing boards, parental participation in governing board meetings varies considerably. For example, although about 50-60 percent of children in Mongolia, Georgia, and Iraq attend schools with governing boards, parental participation in board meetings varies widely among these countries. Only 26 percent of Mongolian children have parents who attended board meetings, compared to 33 percent of Georgian children and 44 percent of Iraqi children whose parents attend meetings.
Whether a child attends a board school is also closely related to household wealth. In only four of the 13 countries analyzed – Zimbabwe, the Kyrgyz Republic, Lesotho and The Gambia – do children from the poorest fifth attend schools with governing boards at the level of the national average. In other countries, the percentage of the poorest children attending board schools is below the national average.
Moreover, the poorest parents participate in school governing boards at rates lower than the national average in all countries except Zimbabwe, the Kyrgyz Republic and The Gambia. In summary, although the existence of school governing boards is important for parental involvement in school, household wealth is also an important factor.
Parent Engagement In Schools
Similar to parental involvement in school, the proportion of parents who participate in parental care at home varies widely between and within countries. For example, the proportion of children receiving homework help is more than twice as high in Zimbabwe (89 percent) as in Madagascar (42 percent).
MICS6 shows that household wealth is a major determinant of parental involvement at home. In all countries except Georgia, fewer children from the lowest quintile received homework help than their peers from the wealthiest quintiles. In some countries, such as Madagascar, Punjab (Pakistan) or Sierra Leone, the difference is quite large.
Another determinant of parental participation in home education is the availability of children’s books and household wealth. Here we also see large differences between countries – for example, most children in Georgia live in households that have children’s books, but more than 90 percent of the poorest children in Punjab (Pakistan), Iraq, Madagascar, Lesotho and Zimbabwe live in households that do not one book for children.
What can we do to ensure that all children, including the poorest, have the educational support of their parents at school and at home?
How Family Engagement Leads To Student Success
The MICS6 Parental Involvement module provides important new insights into critical factors related to children’s education. As these preliminary findings reveal, parents from the poorest households may not be able to fully participate and help in their child’s education.
New insights such as this and others provided by MICS6 provide policymakers and researchers with powerful tools to better understand the nature and impact of factors such as parental involvement in child education, and will be explored in more detail in an upcoming series of articles on the COVID-19 pandemic. By informing policy-led policy-making that targets support for the poorest families, MICS6 helps give every child an equal opportunity to participate in education, even in times of crisis. Thirty years of research (and counting) has proven that parents being involved in their child’s education is the best predictor of student success.
This family involvement is essential for students to remain committed to their education – not just during the school year, but throughout their education. Research confirms this to be true throughout any school district or educational program.
We wanted to dig deeper into exactly how parental involvement affects education and encourage parents everywhere to get involved. So we studied the research and took a deep dive into the connection between family engagement and the outcome it has on children’s learning.
Lights, Cameras, Action…engaging Parents With Learning Fun
For some parents, being involved means dropping off or picking up their child from school, or asking if homework is done. This does not mean that these things are negative or useless.
But the American Psychological Association calls for something more—shared responsibility: “[Parents] and school personnel work together to support and improve the learning, development, and health of children and adolescents.”
In the context of children’s education, parental involvement is a broad term that can take many forms inside and outside of school. So, what role do parents play in education?
Depending on the schedule, parents can help their children by participating in school functions or duties, advocating for the school, and improving their children’s schoolwork.
Framework Of Six Types Of Involvement
In 1992, educator Armendia Dixon wrote, “Parental involvement, in almost any form, produces measurable gains in student achievement.” And that is still true today.
According to People for Education, an independent Canadian organization, both of the above types of activities are essential. However, research shows that students’ academic achievement and the presence of activities at home are more closely related than activities at school.
What’s more, the National Center for Family and School Connections found that students whose parents were involved saw academic success regardless of income or background. This means that parents should make a special effort to involve themselves in their child’s education.
You can really improve your child’s education by creating a stimulating learning environment at home. You can also do this by getting more involved in the school community.
Quiz & Worksheet
The research is clear: parental and family involvement creates better outcomes for students. We wanted to dive deeper into this research and show you the tangible impact. Here are five key ones
Parental involvement in schools, parental involvement in schools statistics, what is parental involvement in schools, parental involvement in elementary schools, increase parental involvement in schools, how important is parental involvement in education, why is parental involvement important in education, why is parental involvement important in early childhood education, parental involvement in schools research, parental involvement in public schools, parental involvement schools, why is parental involvement important
