SOME PARENTS are discouraged from getting involved in school life because they feel the teachers are not very approachable or the school discourages involvement, a new study by the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) has found.
The study of parental involvement in post-primary education found that work and childcare commitments were the most frequently cited potential barriers to parents getting more involved with their child’s school.
However, one in four parents said some teachers discouraged their involvement because they were not very approachable. And one in six said they felt the school did not want parents involved.
Parents’ childhood experiences of school also emerged as a potential barrier. “Thus working-class parents may be more reluctant to approach the school about particular issues because school had been a negative experience for them,” the report said.
The ESRI said the report, which also involved the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment and the Department of Education, was “the most comprehensive study to date of Irish parents’ involvement in their children’s education”. It draws on surveys of, and in-depth interviews with, parents and teachers and builds on the ongoing Post-Primary Longitudinal Study which is following students in 12 schools.
Prof Emer Smyth of the ESRI, who co-authored the study with Dr Delma Byrne of NUI Maynooth, said one of the most striking findings was the extent of parental involvement in post-primary education.
The study found that parents were the main source of advice for young people making choices on issues such as picking subjects and third-level options.
Informal parental involvement, through discussing educational decisions, was associated with improved exam performance among young people, it said.
The study found that formal contact with the school, such as involvement in the parents’ council, was generally limited to more highly educated, middle-class parents.
“Generally, working-class parents with lower levels of education tend to have less formal contact with the school,” the authors said. “Where they have contact, it is more likely to be in response to difficulties with their child’s behaviour or lack of educational progress.”
The study also found that higher professional parents were more likely to send their child to a school outside the local area. Some middle-class parents planned ahead by taking into account feeder primary schools when picking a post-primary school.
While it found that parents were broadly satisfied with their children’s schooling, levels of dissatisfaction were greater with the junior cycle curriculum than with the senior curriculum.
More than one-third of parents felt their children took too many subjects at junior cycle level. Concern was also expressed about the lack of formal guidance on the long-term implications of taking or dropping subjects at this level.
Concerns about career guidance were highlighted at senior cycle with one in four parents saying they were not satisfied with this aspect of their child’s school.
HELPING PARENTS SCOPE TO IMPROVE INFORMATION:
The importance of providing parents with information to help them assist their children in making choices about their education was highlighted by the ESRI study.
It said most parents were happy with the information they received from the school but there was “scope to improve the provision of information to parents of post-primary students on the options open to their children”.
Schools should be encouraged to develop “a clearly defined school policy or plan for productive and effective parental involvement”.
The study said many parents would like to see increased academic guidance in the early years of second-level education when children were making decisions about subject choices.
It also noted the request from parents for a greater focus on computer skills, life skills and on preparing children for the world of work.
The National Parents Council (Post-Primary) welcomed the report and said the finding that some teachers and schools discouraged parental involvement tallied with its own findings.
It also called on schools to provide better support to students and parents when they were faced with narrowing down subject choices at junior cycle level.
Behind the Scenes? A Study of Parental Involvement in Post-Primary Education is available on the esri.ie
