Parental involvement, The Key that Leads to Students’ Success?

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Posted on by Ahmad Amirali

Parental involvement, The Key that Leads to Students’ Success?
By Ahmad Amirali

Let me tell you about some myths which I always heard in my childhood ‘your success is based on how much your teacher is investing in you’, ‘if you want success in your exams, follow your teacher’. Why are these assumptions myths? Let’s assume if these are myths, what factors should be involved in students’ academic success? Is it students’ socioeconomic profile or the profile of the school in which student is learning? The most crucial factor that leads to student success is how families encourage learning at home and involve themselves in their child’s education.

What is Parental Involvement?

Experts believe that parental involvement means sharing responsibility between teacher and parent to help children learn and meet educational goals. Parental involvement is possible when teachers involve parents in school-related matters, such as parent-teacher meetings, class assessment observations, engaging parents in some classroom activities, or voluntarily supporting parents at home and school. Parents oblige to prioritise their kids’ educational goals, and teachers compel to provide space for parent collaboration and dialogue.

Why is Parental Involvement Necessary?

Parental involvement and engagement in education matter most, especially when students spend much time in remote learning. According to Blackboard (2016) research, The number of parents now believes that friendly parent-teacher communication is ineffective. Parents now prefer virtual methods of communication, like online student portals, and they are less likely to attend parent-teacher conferences or school activities. This change is sudden and alarming for the student who partly relies on their teacher and entirely relies on their parents. Tech-gears and virtual tools may help families to stay informed. However, students feel ignored when they observe that their parent have no personal time and support for them.

Factors Involve in this Sudden Negative Change in Parental Involvement

There are multi-layered factors involved that may hinder the parent’s participation at school. For the past two years, I gathered some fascinating excuses from parents who could not attend any of the meetings and parental sessions scheduled throughout the term.

  • Some parents provide scheduling or transportation excuses that make volunteering or attending parent-teacher conferences tough.
  • Some service-oriented parents have the usual ‘Unable to attend the meeting due to Job timings’ excuses.
  • Some parents even complain back that teacher did not prior informed them (Even they signed the meeting circular, which was delivered through their child).
  • Some parents did not dare even to respond or showed up at PTM.
  • Some business-oriented parents only prefer to be communicated on a cell phone and never showed up in person.
  • Some parents felt ashamed because they thought they thought I might complain about their children’s classroom behaviour.

The above Responses and excuses become common nowadays. However, the matter of concern is that parent involvement in school are declining at a fast pace.

Parental involvement and Students Success Rate

Children with engaged parents are more likely to:

What Makes Parental Involvement Possible?

To build the foundations for parent-teacher communication in schools, The Waterford Organisation developed a document in which they suggest three ways to have better parent-teacher communication.

  1. Communication
  2. Common Goals
  3. Connections

Download the document in PDF.

Are you’re a Teacher: What are your experiences when you try to involve parents in classrooms?

Are you a Parent: Do you think parental involvement is the key to students’ success?

Share your thought in a comment below 🙂

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