Parents' involvement in child's education: a catalyst to success

| Friday March 18, 2011 00:00

FRANCISTOWN: While every parent expects nothing less than academic excellence from their school-going child, not many of them actively play their part. According to the Principal of John Mackenzie Primary School in Francistown, Pieter Langeveldt, the education of a child should be a partnership between parents and teachers.

Speaking in an interview with Mmegi, he said parents have to become part of the whole school process by getting involved in all aspects of the school curriculum. Langeveldt, who says that his school has a set of consultation days in a year during which parents and teachers meet to discuss issues of common interest, describes the parents of his pupils as 'very supportive.'

Besides, his school has an open door policy where parents can visit and interact with the teachers. The principal adds that whenever necessary, a teacher invites the parent for a one-on-one discussion of the child. Langeveldt says because John Mackenzie is a private school with no financial assistance from government, a lot of fundraising activities are undertaken in aid of the development of the school. This, he says, together with a myriad of other social functions involving parents and teachers, has had the effect of bringing the two stakeholders together and raised in the parents a feeling of ownership of the school.

Langevelt adds that in their situation as a private school, parents are customers who have every right to demand nothing less than excellence from the school, considering that they pay a lot of money in school fees. Monty Moswela is a former government secondary school principal who says he would have no doubt loved to be in Langeveldt's comfortable shoes. His experience in the so-called Tswana medium school system for more than 10 years as school head is that parents delegate their responsibilities to teachers.

Moswela, who said parents hardly show up for consultative meetings with teachers, adds that parents generally show little interest in what their children are doing at school. Emphasizing the importance of parents taking charge of the school lives of their children, Moswela is disappointed by parents who use teachers as scarecrows for their children by threatening to report them to their teachers for misdemeanours even at home.

Experts say every effort needs to be made to take parents on board and make them part of the school by involving them in school activities. They say school authorities should endeavour to increase communication between the school and the parents by encouraging parents to get involved in their child's education. Parents should attend PTA meetings, visit the school on 'open days,' meet teachers on an individual basis, respond to written communications from the school and, above all, talk to their children at home about school. Parents are not only expected to assist with their child's homework, they are also expected to monitor the child's performance at school by looking at the reports, school work and talking to their child's teachers.

But it is common to find parents who do not know what standard their children are in, let alone the names of their children's teachers. Patricia Brown says the reason some parents do not get involved in the learning experience of their children is that they themselves might be uneducated and therefore feel inadequate in a school setting. Brown says because of little education on their part, parents might have no understanding of the role expected of them by education authorities. 'Parents may also feel uneasy if their cultural style or socio-economic level differ from those of the teachers,' she concludes. 

It should be added that traditionally, parents have too much faith in teachers and would rather leave their children in the 'very able hands' of the teachers. Failure on the part of some parents to interact with their children's teachers is sometimes a genuine case of lack of time on the part of the parent. In the past, many wives stayed at home while their husbands worked.

Today, many wives are professionals alongside their husbands. This leaves parents with little time to physically attend to the educational needs of their children. Nonetheless, according to the Michigan Department of Education, when parents are involved in the education of their children, the children tend to attend school better and perform better in class. The benefit of a healthy working relationship between the teachers and the parents is that the child will get the message that the school and the home are connected. According to this education department, the earlier a parent starts taking an interest in the education of their child the better.

Pauline Caiphas, a resident of Francistown, says she helps her 8-year old child with schoolwork and intends to continue doing that even as the child progresses with his education. She says she plays educational games with the child and watches educational programmes on television with him. She regulates the boy's daily activities and monitors his movements.

Caiphus is also mindful of the fact that the child should be allowed time to play as a matter of necessity for his physical and mental development.  Experts say it is up to the parents to create a supportive home environment for the child and establish a daily family routine where even the non-academic activities of the child are monitored. Morgan Moseki is a product of the 'Tswana medium' educational system who has had children schooling at John Mackenzie. He currently has a child at Mophato, another English medium school in Francistown.

Moseki attributes the difference in the level of parental involvement in private and government schools to the fact that many parents do not have enough education and exposure to understand what is at stake. He says the majority of parents whose children go to private schools are of the middle-class who can appreciate how competitive the world has become. After investing so much money in the education of their children, they do not only expect good performance but they do everything to ensure one.

Social commentator, Ditiro Majadibodu, says parents must understand the fact that education, be it formal or informal, is part and parcel of bringing up children. He insists that any good parent will understand the importance of becoming involved in all the stages of their child's development. In his view, early formal education is the most critical stage of any child's development.

Majadibodu says interaction between parents and teachers will enable the teacher to know and appreciate from the parent the social environment in which the child lives. According to him, parents who meet teachers get to understand better their role in the education of their children. Besides, Majadibodu says, because people have the tendency to exploit whatever loopholes are at their disposal, children whose parents never meet teachers can play truancy without the parent knowing. Some children may intercept and hide or destroy their school reports intended for the parents. Some children have requested for money from their parents, for instance, claiming that the money was in aid of some school project when they infact wanted the money to satisfy their own juvenile adventures.             

Parents who do not communicate with teachers are not in a position to know how their child relates with the teachers, says Majadibodu. He adds that it is only through the involvement of the parent in the education of their child that the parent would know how the child is doing academically as well.

A good relationship between parents, their children and teachers tends to motivate children to behave well at school. Adding that the education of a child is a concerted effort between parents and teachers, he says parents should give the system their full support at all times. It is up to the parents to be familiar with the school's daily timetable so that the child does not take advantage of the parents' ignorance to arrive late from school claiming to have been in class. Majadibodu says it is important for school authorities to adopt a positive attitude towards parents and make them feel not only welcome but wanted.

He hopes that as people become more and more enlightened, parents will realise that it is not enough for them to privately wish their children a good grade without creating the right environment for the achievement of the desired results. Social work lecturer at the University of Botswana, Log Raditlhokwa, says for parents to understand their own children and the sort of challenges and assistance they need, they should get involved in all aspects of their lives, especially their formal education.

Raditlhokwa says parents who get involved in the life of their children encourage their children to open up and share with them the challenges they might be facing, such as bullying at school. He adds that children get motivated and do better in their schoolwork if their parents show interest in what they are doing.