Involvement of parents in the school can have an immediate, positive effect on development of skills, academic achievements and readiness among children. Schools should understand that quality education is essential for children. Parents and teachers should always find ways to work together. In many cases, increased parent involvements are good both for students and schools. An ideal avenue for improved parent involvement is better home-school communcation.
Ineffective and irregularity of communication could cause a wide gap, which makes educational process works less efficiently. Many parents are frustrated by lack of communication from school and administrators should immediately solve such issues. Commitment between both parties is essential to ensure increased parent engagement. Here are ways to improve involvement of parents at school:
1. Encourage parents to help and monitor students at home:
Real parent involvement starts at home and it is the place where parents can monitor how their children study. Parents can ask and listen to children’s account about their activities at school. They can set schedule on when students should study at home and check whether they have completed their school assignments and homework.
Parents should have an active involvement in helping children with school projects. They need to know what challenges students face at school. Children should always disclose their problems, so parents can help them to solve any issue. Regular communication could help parents to get updates and keep abreast of children’s involvement at school. Supportive parents often have happier children who perform better academically.
2. Encourage parents to be more active at school:
Active interest among parents can be a particularly positive force. Schools can invite parents to meeting and open days. Teachers should collect contact information of parents and encourage them to keep constant communication. Many parents are frustrated to see that school communication is infrequent and irregular. To solve this, school can send e-mail, school newsletter and other notes to parents.
Mobile messages and alerts can be sent as a broadcast to parents, so they will be opened immediately upon delivery. These simple steps should be able to solve much of the lack of communication between school and parents. There should be a systematic approach to allow better communication. As an example, school can send out invitations at specific times.
3. Distribute mobile apps:
Local app developers should be able to provide simple apps that can help notify parents through their mobile devices. The mobile app could help school to deliver latest news, announcements and emergency messages. Developing simple apps should be reasonably affordable and they can only simple client-based software that can receive relay from school.
Obviously, there are some cases where parents’ involvement can be disruptive. A few parents could be particularly assertive and try to directly influence school policies. Despite of these obstacles, there are many great benefits of encouraging parent involvement. It would be much easier for school to control problematic children and academic goals can be achieved much more efficiently.
There’s nothing wrong with adopting specific techniques that can help encourage positive involvement among parents. In fact, all high-profile schools are identified by strong community, in which parents have significant involvement.