By Md Faizullah
Parents’ involvement in children’s education is an essential issue to ensure effective teaching-learning process especially during emergency like the ongoing Covid19 situation when education is almost disrupted for majority of the students. Besides, parents’ involvement in schooling is considered to be a crucial issue in all education levels especially in primary level since parents are the individuals with whom children spend most of their time, and children are more likely to be influenced by them. According to Garcia and Thornton (2014:1) current research shows that the involvement of family in learning helps to improve student performance, reduce absenteeism and restore parents' confidence in their children's education. Although Bangladesh has been gaining momentum in higher achievement in recent years, there still exist several drawbacks in participation of parents in children’s education, especially in government primary schools. Somewhere it is still symbolic based on school authorities’ will.
Existing practices of parents’ involvement in schooling are not satisfactory at all to achieve the school goals. Schooling capacity is growing day by day in a faster pace but has little in improvement in ensuring participation and democratization of the schooling process. Different institutional mechanisms like parents’ meeting and Parent-Teacher Association (PTA) have failed to involve parents in their children’s schooling. Scopes for the parents’ involvement are not extensively explored to use for the betterment of the school performance. Students benefit significantly when there is an individual encouraging and expecting the child to be academically successful. In fact, even when family involvement is described as minimal or poorly structured, it still makes a difference in students’ daily lives and their planning for the future. “Partnerships among schools, families, and community groups are not a luxury—they are a necessity”. (Chris Ferguson, (2008).
Sarason (1995) challenged educators to institute genuine participatory structures by arguing that greater community involvement is necessary if we as a democratic society adhere to the political principle “when you are going to be affected, directly or indirectly, by a decision, you should stand in some relationship to the decision-making process”. Macfarlane (2007) argues that neither home nor school can operate to the optimum isolation in the context of education and therefore, school and home must work together for a healthy environment of learning for students. The value of home-school relationships is that they can help the educators to understand family perspectives of the students and reduce the gaps between students, parents and teachers (Macfarlane, 2004).
Parents’ involvement in children’s schooling motivates children to study regularly that helps kids to improve their academic results in every subject. Regarding the policy issue, school authorities and government should introduce range of policy options and strategies to improve parental engagement, the ways through which involvements take place, potential challenges and the supports given to schools and parents by the government. It will also outline the importance of parental involvement in schooling (Kabir, A.H., & Akter, F., 2014).
The relationship between parents and teachers can have a profound impact on children’s learning outcome. According to Llamas and Tuazon (2016:59) parents become comfortable when the education system requires their involvement in school activities. The strong collaboration of parents with school authorities can lead to increased improvement in both physical and academic performance of the school. Parental involvement improves teacher performance. When parents have better communication with teachers, they learn to value the work and the challenges that teachers face, which makes the teachers feel appreciated. It also helps the teachers to get to know the student more, allowing them to teach in a more personalized and effective way.
Therefore, both parents and teachers should be proactive to maintain a healthy relationship among themselves to have a clear idea about children’s education and all kinds of improvements and how to help them out during any unexpected scenario like Covid19 situation. The teachers who know about the lifestyle of students can easily be able to identify students’ individual problems and take actions accordingly to improve students overall learning as leaning happens most when there is no disruption in one’s life. If parents and teachers would maintain close and respectful relations, students might not get deprived of their regular learning during any emergency situation, and both partners could come forward with some timely ideas and strategies to help students to continue their studies. However, a huge gap in the learning outcome of students having different family backgrounds is predicted to be noticed due to the lack of healthy partnership between parents and teachers. Moreover, our government and concerned authorities should be conscious to ensure effective parental engagement in children’s education so that when any national or international emergency comes, children can keep going with studies sitting at their homes.
The writer is an educator and M.Ed. student at BRAC University.