Parental involvement – a missing link
Oct 16, 2003
By: Sindiswa Mbokodi, Prakash Singh and Vuyisile Msila
The South African Schools Act (1996) envisaged a partnership between parents and schools in school governance to ensure quality education. It was hoped that involving parents in education would give them insight into their children’s progress, encourage them to participate in decisions involving schools and make them critical of information on educational issues. It was further hoped that their involvement would influence communities to support their schools.
The introduction of Outcomes-Based Education (OBE) also paved the way for greater parental involvement in education. The system requires the parents to share the responsibility of education with the state and to use the knowledge gained to build and develop their communities and country. The success of such a system depends on both the parents’ and the teachers’ preparedness as implementers.
But a study conducted recently by the authors of this article found that 90% of the parents did not know much about OBE. It appears that there has been little emphasis and focus on parent empowerment. It suggests that the limited success of OBE in South Africa to date is at least partly due to the lack of involvement of parents — especially the insufficient participation of black parents in managing schools.
The study also found that, up until now, black parental involvement in the education of historically disadvantaged schools has been beset with problems that undermine initiatives to promote involvement. Some of the factors that discourage involvement include:
– Unemployment, which gives rise to the parents’ low socio-economic status and which in turn does not permit parents to provide books and other relevant learning materials necessary for successful study. This also limits their means to give their children the levels of privacy and comfort that enhance serious study. At the end of the day, children go home to parents who have no resources to educationally enrich them.
– Parental level of education or low literacy levels, which discourage parents from helping their children with schoolwork.
– Lack of support programmes that empower black parents to participate fully and meaningfully in education.
– Lack of guidance teachers’ services that empower learners to enhance their skills.
– Lack of library facilities that would solve some of the black learners’ problems experienced at home.
– Education that is made irrelevant to community needs by ignoring cultural traditions and marginalising the learners by teaching them insensitive curricula while ignoring indigenous knowledge.
One possible way forward is for provincial departments of education to look at forming regional parent representative councils that would operate under a provincial parent representative council. These in turn would fall under a national parent body representing all South African provinces. The function of such a body would be to garner the necessary support for all parents, but especially those with a low socio-economic status, so that they are sufficiently empowered to play their part in their children’s education.
There needs to be an urgent national focus on these issues. Parents have to be made to believe in themselves as they help their children in school activities. If we want to be a successful nation our parents have to be at the forefront of education in dialogue with the teachers and the learners. Schools must not alienate parents. If teachers can be convinced of the importance of luring parents to schools through a number of programmes, and parent-councils do their part in promoting a positive image of schools, then we will be closer to our goal of quality education.
If the government is committed to uplifting the standard of education in the country, especially in the historically disadvantaged communities, the factors that have been identified in this article need to be tackled as a matter of urgency.
Sindiswa Mbokodi is a lecturer in the faculty of education at Vista University. Vuyisile Msila is a lecturer in the education faculty (further teacher education) at Unisa. Prakash Singh lectures in the education faculty at Vista University