Practices of parental involvement in government primary schools

Abstract

This study addressed the significance of parental involvement in children’s education as an essential factor in achieving children’s academic success. However, the existing practices of parental involvement concern challenges to the stakeholders in government primary schools. This study endeavored methods of optimal parental involvement strategies perceived by parents and teachers. Furthermore, this study also explored ways of effective parental involvement practices according to the opinion of parents and teachers. This study undertook a qualitative research framework and semi-structured interviewing procedures to obtain data from 6 primary school teachers. Besides this, 12 parents were chosen for the focus group discussion from both rural and urban primary schools. This study addressed a high requirement of having stronger communication between parents and teachers, which was acknowledged by them, this investigation also uncovered numerous challenges associated with parental engagement process, which are: miscommunication between parents and teachers, parents’ ignorance, illiteracy, poor economic condition. From the teachers’ side; overloaded classroom, workload, and ineffectiveness of PTA activities. In the final analysis, this study revealed certain factors that has been proposed as recommendations by the participants for facilitating productive parental involvement initiatives. These are: Parents’ close connection with children, strong communication with teachers, facilitating parents’ workshops, and strengthening PTA activities by the school authority. The findings determined that respectful collaboration between parents and teachers is crucial for promoting children’s academic performance and comprehensive growth.