Introduction

Many researchers recognize the important role that strong positive bond between
homes and schools, play in the development and education of chil-dren The theories
put forward have been supported, and reaffirmed, by numerous studies that have shown
that good co-operation between schools, homes and the communities can lead to
academic achievement for students, as well as to reforms in education. Research has
also shown that successful students’ have strong academic support from their in-volved
parents (Tewodros, 2014). Furthermore, research on effective schools, those where
students are learning and achieving, has consistently shown that these schools despite
often working in low social and economic neighborhoods, have strong and positive
school-home relationships. More importantly, these effective schools with positive
school climate, have made a real effort in reaching out to their students’ families in
order to bring about good cooperation. maintain that schools become successful when a
strong and positive relationship among students, parents, teachers and the community
has been established. All stu-dents’ are more likely to experience academic success if
their home environ-ment is supportive.

There are many reasons for develop-ing and establishing a partnership between
school, family and community. The main reason for such a partnership is to aid
students in succeeding at school. Other reasons include improving school climate
and school programs, developing parental skills and leadership, assisting families
in connecting with others in the school and the community, and assisting teachers
with their work. All these reasons emphasize the importance of parents playing an
active role in their children’s’ education and keeping a strong and positive
relationship with schools.

Models of parental involvement

Educators and parents play major roles in the educational success of students. Students need a
positive learning experience to succeed in school: one providing support, motivation, and
quality instruction. With the increasing demands on the family, parental support in the
education of students ex-tends beyond the school building. Many families are faced with
overwhelming and unpredictable schedules and circumstances while juggling school, sports,
family situations, family time, work schedules, and other responsibilities, al-lowing minimal
time to provide support in any one given area Although it seems that parental involvement
is researched the topic of many domestic and foreign studies, there is still concern
regarding parental in-evolvement and what constitutes effective parental involvement in
the education of students. Educators, parents, and community members may have
different opinions regarding effective involvement practices and the ways each can con-
tribute to the educational process.

Parental involvement in the education of students begins at home with the parents
providing a safe and healthy environment, appropriate learning ex-periences, support,
and a positive attitude about school. Several studies indicate increased academic
achievement with students that have involved parents.Studies also indicate that parental
involvement is most effective when viewed as a partnership between educators and
parents. By ex-mining parents’ and teachers’ perceptions, educators and parents should
have a better understanding of effective parental involvement practices in promoting
student achievement.

have studied parental involvement and its effects on the educational process over the years. the
founder and director ( school name). With numerous studies and work in over 100
publications, focuses on school, family, and community partnership programmers that will
improve policy and practice in an effort to increase student academic achievement and student
success. Epstein has identified a framework which containing six important factors with
regards to parental involvement. This framework is based on findings from many studies of
what factors are most effective with regards comes to children’s education . Those six factors
are parent-ing, communicating, volunteering, learning at home, decision-making and
collaborating with the community.
Parenting – includes all of the activities that parents engage in to raise happy, healthy
children who become capable students. Unlike teachers, whose influence on a child’s is
relatively limited, parents maintain a life-long commit-ment to their children. Activities that
support this type of involvement provide information to parents about their child’s
development, health, safety, or home conditions that can support student learning. Includes:
parent education and other courses or training for parents, family support programmes to
assist fam-ilies with health, nutrition, and other services, home visits at transition points
to elementary, middle, and secondery school.

Communicating – Familes and schools communicate with each other in multiple ways.
Schools send home notes and flyers about important events and activities. Parents give
teachers information about their child’s health and educational history. A school website is an
additional mode of communication with parents and families. Includes: conferences with
every parent at least once a year, language translators to assist families as needed, regular
schedule of use-ful notices, memos, phone calls, newsletters, and other communications.

Volunteering – applies to recruiting and organising help and support from parents for
school programmes and students’ activities. There are three basic ways that individuals
volunteer in education. First, they may volunteer in the school or classroom by helping
teachers and adminstrators as tutors or as-sistants. Second, they may volunteer for the school;
for instance, fundraising for an event or promoting a school in the community. Finally, they
may volunteer as a member of an audience, attending school programmes or performances.
Includes: school/classroom volunteer programme to help teachers, administra-tors, students,
and other parents, parent room or family center for volunteer work, meetings, and resources
for families, annual postcard survey to identify all available talents, times, and locations of
volunteers.

Learning at home – pertains to providing ideas and information to par-ents about

how they can best assist their children with homework and curric-ular-related decisions
and activities. Parents helping their children with home-work or takeing them to a
museum, are examples of this type of involvement. These activities produce a school-
oriented family and encourage parents to interact with the school curriculum. Activities
to encourage learning at home provide parents with information on what children are
doing in the classroom and how to help them with homework. Includes: information for
families on skills required for students in all subjects at each grade, information on home-
work policies and how to monitor and discuss schoolwork at home, as well as family
participation in setting student goals each year and in planning for college or work.

Decision making – refers to including parents in school decisions and to developing

parent leaders and representatives. Parents participate in school decision making when they
become part of school governance committees or join organizations, such as the
parent/teachers association. Other decision-making activities include taking on leadership
roles that involve disseminating information to other parents. Includes: other parent
organizations, advisory councils, or committees for parent leadership and par-ticipation,
independent advocacy groups to lobby for school reform and im-provements, networks to
link all families with parent representatives.

Collaborating with the community – pertains to identifying and in-tegrating

communities’’ services and resources to support and strengthen schools, students, and
their families. Includes: information for students and families on community health,
cultural, recreational, social support, and other programmes/services, information on
community activities that link to learn-ing skills and talents, including summer
programmes for students.

Each of these factors can lead to various results for students, parents, teaching practices, and
the school climate. In addition, each factor includes many different practices of partnership.
Lastly, each factor poses challenges to involve all families and those challenges must be met.
That is why (school namme) considers it to be significant for each school to choose what fac-
tors are believed to be most likely to assist the school in reaching its goals for academic
success, and to develop a climate of alliance between homes and the school. Even though the
primary focus of these six factors is to promote aca-demic achievements, they also contribute
to various results for both parents and teachers. For instance, it may be presumed that par-ents
will gain more self-confidence in their role as parents, they will show lead-ership with
decision-making, and they will have more effective and productive communication with their
children with regards to school work, and will have more communication with other parents at
the school. parents also gain a more positive attitude towards the school and its staff, and gain
more confidence in assisting their children with homework, by being involved with their
education. In addition, they are more likely to gather support for the school and its
programmess in the community and become more active community members. For teachers,
the benefits may be presumed to be better communication with parents, a deeper understanding
of the family of their students and their situation, and more effective commu-nication with
both the homes and the community also claim that the schools will benefit from parental
involve-ment by improved teacher morale, more support from families and higher student
academic achievement. In addition, asserts that schools function best when parents and the
community are active participants and have a sense of ownership of the school. Therefore, it is
safe to say that these six fac-tors not only benefit the students, but also their parents, teachers
and schools.
Determinants of Parental Involvement
Parents’ cognitions about their role have been identified as a major con-tributor to their
willingness to engage in supportive parenting. We focused on three forms of parental
cognition: parents’ aspirations concerning their children’s future occupation, their self-
efficacy in rearing and educating their children, and their perceptions of the school .
Parental Aspirations – Parental aspirations refer to idealistic hopes or goals that
parents may form regarding future attainment. Parents who hold high aspirations
for their children’s future are likely to be more willing to ex-ert efforts to ensure
that those aspirations are realized. Indeed, evidence from research suggests that
educational and occupational aspirations are associated with the ways in which
parents shape children’s activities, time, and learning environment .

Parenting Self-Efficacy – The construct of self-efficacy refers to „beliefs in one’s capabilities

to organize and execute the courses of action required to produce given attainments”.
Research conducted in a va-riety of countries finds that individuals with high self-efficacy in a
specific area exert effort in that area, persevere in the face of difficulty, and respond resilient-
ly to adversity. They are less prone to self-defeating thought patterns, and they experience less
stress and depression than those with lower self-efficacy. The construct of self-efficacy is
intended to be domain specific; particular experiences with respect to a given domain affect
the individual’s sense of confidence about acting efficaciously in that domain.

The domain of parenting self-efficacy has been examined at length, and parenting self-efficacy has
shown to be an extraordinarily powerful determinant of effective parenting behavior in Western societies.
Parents with high self-efficacy are generally more optimistic, authoritative, and consistent in their
interactions with their children than those with lower parenting self-efficacy Additionally, theoretical
formulations have identified parenting self-efficacy as a key determinant of parental involvement in
schooling Empirical work suggests that parents with high self-efficacy are more likely to monitor their
children’s school-work and to participate actively at the school.

Perceptions of the School – Parents’ degree of involvement is likely to be affected by the

school itself. If teachers appear to care about the welfare of the child, communicate respect for
parents, and develop effective means of communicating with families, parents are more
willing and able to become in-volved in their children’s schooling.

Parental involvement: a summary of empirical findings

 Parents and families have a major impact on the success of the process of education and upbringing of
children. Involvement of parents is related to their position at home (monitoring the learning of
children), as well as participation in activities organized at school (parent-teacher conferences, volunteer
activi-ties, various forms of parental activism, workshops and seminars for parents). It is well
established that parental involvement is correlated with school achieve-ment of both children and
adolescents Elementary school children gain greater academic, language, and social skills, middle and
high school students have greater achievement and future aspirations and spend more time doing and
completing homework. Research shows that parental in-volvement is more important to children’s
academic success than their fam-ily’s socioeconomic status, race, ethnicity, or educational background
Parental involvement can encourage children’s and adolescents’ achievement in many ways.
One way that parents can contribute positively to their children’s education is to assist them
with their academic work at home. Parents who read to their children, assist them with their
homework, and provide tutoring using resources provided by teachers tend to do better in
school than children whose parents do not assist them Futhermore, research shows that the
level of parental involvement is associated with academic success. Children whose parents
are actively involved in their schooling benefit better than children whose parents are
passively involved. Specifically, if parents attend teacher con-ferences, accept phone calls
from the school, and read and sign messages from school, their children will benefit
academically more than children whose par-ents do none of the above. Furthermore, children
excel even more when their parents assist them at home with their homework, attend school
sponsored events, and volunteer at their children’s schools.

Barriers to parental involvement

Although parental involvement is recognized as being of significance in the education of

children, there remains great diversity concerning parental involvement. Some factors exist
over which schools have little control and these

factors have become of great interest to educational decision makers Today’s parents are
often preoccupied with the distractions and demands of daily life. Burdened by low-income,
inflexible work hours and language bar-riers, some parents are unable to attend school
activities or participate in the schooling of their children on a regular basis as well as cite
cultural norms, insufficient financial resources, and lack of educational attainment as barriers
to parental involvement in school.
Students are a critical component for successful school, family, and com-munity
involvement and can create a barrier for partnerships when they fail to fulfill their duty.
Students are often responsible for deliver-ing information and communicating with their
parents regarding school pro-grammes, activities, and events.

In programmes that require high level of involvement, teachers help stu-dents understand their
role and the importance of actively participating in the family, school, and community
partnership. Given decreased budgeted funds in education and increased expectations, school
administrators and teachers must take the initiative to involve parents in an effort to assist the
educational achievement of students. Some school adminis-trators and teachers may not know
how to involve parents; therefore, educa-tors lacking this knowledge could be taught
techniques for involving parents and creating partnerships. Administrators and teachers may
not fully understand the importance of parental involvement and the effects of parental
involvement on student achievement .

Often, teachers believe parents do not support the school and do not discipline children
when there has been a problem at school. When teachers do not feel parental support, they
often believe it is a waste of their time to contact parents.

Adequately parent involvement: examples of good practice

Considering the research findings, their own practical experience, as well as discussions with
other experts, summarize some of the basic principles that the process of involving families
can make meaningful and useful. First, the involvement of parents must be part of a broader
strategy of complementary support learning and development as a systematic effort supported
by joint action of all stakeholders. Furthermore, the involvement of parents should be viewed
as a continuous process that has its evolutionary stages through childhood and adolescence,
and is especially important in the periods of the transition of children from one to another level
of schooling. However, not all parents have equal capacities for fuller participation in all
activities and not all schools are interested and able adequately support participation in them.
Research shows that the traditional system of parental participation, despite good intentions,
usually leaves out the participation of non-dominant parents. In the modern school system,
there is no gener-ally accepted model of parental participation.
Analyzing a number of existing approaches in establishing an adequate model of
the relationship between parents and schools, Swap (1993) identifies three models
of parental involvement.

Protective Model – the goal of this model is to avoid conflict between teachers
and parents by keeping the teaching and parenting functions separate (Swap, 1993). It is
referred to as the protective model because its objective is to protect the school from
interference by parents. The teacher’s responsibility is to educate children, while the
parent’s responsibility is to make sure children get to school on time with the correct
supplies. In this model, parental involve-ment is seen as unnecessary and as potentially
interfering with the education of children.

Transmission Model – is predicated on the view that teachers see them-selves as the
primary source of expertise on children but who recognize the benefits of using parents as a
resource (Swap, 1993). In this model, the teacher remains in control and decides on the
intervention, but does accepts that par-ents can play an important role in facilitating
children’s progress. Teachers us-ing this approach must have additional skills, including
techniques to effec-tively guide parents and interpersonal skills to establish productive
working relationships. One drawback of this approach is the assumption that all par-ents
can, and should, take on the role of acting as a resource (Swap, 1993). This model has the
potential to overburden parents by placing excessive demands on them to carry out
activities in the home.

Curriculum-enrichment Model – the goal of this model is to extend the school

curriculum by incorporating parent’s contributions (Swap, 1993). This model is based on
the assumption that parents have valuable expertise to con-tribute and the interaction
between parents and teachers will enhance the cur-riculum and the educational objectives
of the school. Parent involvement in this model focuses primarily on curriculum and
instruction within schools. The major drawback to this model is that it involves teachers
permitting par-ents to have tremendous input regarded what is taught and how it is taught.
In some cases, this may seem threatening to the teacher.

Consumer Model – In this model, teachers function as more of a con-sultant while

parents decide what action is to be taken. The responsibility of decision-making lies on
the shoulders of the parents, but it is the teachers’ responsibility to provide parents with
relevant information and the options available. In this model, teachers defer to the par-
ents, who are placed in the expert role. Because parents are in control of the decision-
making process, they are more likely to be satisfied with the services they receive, to feel
more confident in their parenting, and to be less dependent on professionals.

Partnership Model – is the most appropriate model one in which teach-ers are considered to
be experts on education and parents are viewed as ex-perts on their children.The goal is to
establish a partnership in which teachers and parents share expertise and control in order to
provide the optimum education for children, each contributing different strengths to the
relationship. Mutual respect, long-term commitment to a wide range of ac-tivities, and
sharing of planning and decision-making responsibilities are the essential components for
true partnerships between parents and teachers are to occur.

The essence of effective partnerships between parents and school staff was
summarized in seven principles by Turnbull and colleagues (2011). A key principle of
effective partnership is trust. The teacher is required to have reli-able, confidential, open
and honest relationships with parents. Furthermore, the relationship must be based on
mutual respect which means respect for the opinions of others and respect for the dignity
of others. Parents should be con-vinced of the competence of persons who are
professionally involved in the work with their children. Effective partnerships require
two-way communication that will enable the exchange of knowledge and ideas between
all parties involved. No less important is the imperative of protecting children, which is
achieved through early identification of problems, their solution, the identi-fication of
appropriate strategies and the promotion of knowledge about the protection of children.

Conclusion
Research has indicated that great schools have effective partnerships with parents,
therefore, school, family, and community partner-ships are critical component in
educating students.

Parental involvement provides an important opportunity for schools to enrich current school
programmes by bringing parents into the educa-tional process. Increased parental involvement
has been shown to result in increased student success, enhanced parent and teacher satisfaction,
and im-proved school climate. To ensure effective parental involvement, schools may have
partnership programmes in place that continually develop, implement, evaluate, and improve
plans and practices encouraging family and community involvement. Schools can encourage
involvement in several of areas including parenting, learning at home, communication,
volunteering, decision-making, and community collaboration. Effective parental involvement
programmes are built upon a careful consideration of the unique needs of the community. In
order to build trust, effective approaches to parent involvement rely upon a strength based
approach, emphasizing positive interactions. Though specifics may vary, all parent
involvement programs share the goal of increasing parent-school collaboration in order to
promote healthy child development and safe school communities.
There must be mutual trust and respect between the home, school, and community. Partnership
programmes within the school can train volunteers on specific ways and strategies to assist in
the classroom or school. With this type of training, all volunteers will know the expectations
and have a better understanding of the operations of the school. Schools need to attempt to in-
volve numerous parents and community members in the education of students through
effective partnership programmes in an effort to express the impor-tance of education. Finally,
schools may implement involvement activities that concentrate on involving all parents.
Administrators and educators must pro-vide a welcoming and inviting atmosphere to make the
school less intimidating and more comfortable for those parents who have negative
experiences in the school. Interactions between the school and home need to be more positive,
requiring teachers to contact families throughout the year and not just when problems arise. It
is may be beneficial for administrators and educators to at-tempt to involve all parents in the
education of their children and make the educational experience more positive for everyone
involved.