Parental Involvement in Student Success

The role of parents in the education of their children is not only desirable but indispensable. It is the onus of schools and parents to explore the myriad of possibilities to promote parental involvement.

Would it be easy to identify a predictor of educational achievement? If yes, would it be likely that it’s something tangible, such as infrastructure or a prestigious school? Or, would a child’s education be most affected by the socioeconomic status of the parents?

The evidence is unequivocal. The best predictor of student success is parental or familial involvement.[1]

According to Waterford.org, the more parents are involved in their children’s education, the better their entire class’s motivation, behavior, and grades become. Studies have shown that when parents participate in their children’s school lives and provide home support and knowledge, children not only finish their homework but also develop a genuine interest in learning. Similarly, teachers who promote parental involvement often witness a remarkable improvement in ensuring learning outcomes in their classrooms.

The CDC describes parental involvement as “parents and school staff working together to support and improve the learning, development, and health of children and adolescents.”

We can look at parental involvement in a child’s education as a perpetually growing scaffolding that committed parents and dedicated educators build together over the course of the student’s education. Consequently, parental engagement must span multiple settings–home, school, playgrounds, and extracurricular classes. Parental involvement becomes the collective responsibility of the school’s management, teachers, coaches, and the community.

“The more parents are involved in their children’s education, the better their entire class’s motivation, behavior, and grades become.” –Waterford.org

Parental involvement at home can help children develop a true interest in learning.

The Clear Wins

When schools, families, and community groups work together to support learning, children display:

• Higher grades and test scores
• More enrollment in higher-level programs
• Reduced absenteeism
• Increased confidence in children’s academics

Parental involvement is also linked to

• Better student behavior
• Enhanced social skills
• Evolved decision-making abilities
• Reduced propensity to develop unhealthy behaviors

Parental involvement also has a significant role to play in language acquisition as well. The most important factors which contribute to the successful adoption of an oral language are listening activities, language instruction, communication strategies, consistent amplification, and unsurprisingly, family support [2]. Studies show that communication and language proficiency is mastered within the cultural contexts of the family, making parental and familial participation vital to a child’s linguistic development.

Linguistic development can be promoted through information sharing between the parents and the teachers. Teachers can provide parents with information about their children’s assessed language levels, language and vocabulary goals, and ideas for eliciting language at home.[2]

Parents can bolster their child’s linguistic development by conducting at-home activities recommended by the teachers.

Studies also show clear evidence that parents shape children’s personalities. Findings suggested that children with highly involved parents had enhanced social functioning and fewer behavior problems.

“Significant associations were detected repeatedly among parent involvement, social skills, and behavior problems in both between- and within-child models. In fact, increases in parents’ involvement over time were related to concomitant increases in children’s social skills and declines in problem behaviors.” — Nermeen E. El Nokali, Heather J. Bachman, Elizabeth Votruba-Drzal [3]

More traditional forms of parental involvement are usually aligned to academic outcomes. In early childhood education, however, parental participation at home should focus more on the social and emotional domains of development. This is because behavior problems and social functioning have an immediate impact on the classroom environment and the efficacy of the educators’ efforts.

Hence, sustained parental involvement guided by educators from an early age plays a pivotal role in nurturing emotionally healthy and well-adjusted children.

With such a long list of positive influences parental involvement can bring about, it becomes the collective responsibility of parents and schools to build systems to promote and sustain parental involvement.

The Trajectory of Involvement

A typical Indian student’s educational journey begins at the age of four. Early childhood schooling in India allows multiple opportunities for parents to participate. Parents of very young children help with the most basic tasks–getting dressed, polishing shoes– and well as more significant ones like learning the alphabet, drawing a flower, or learning how to cycle. Effectively, parents find themselves being closely involved in their children’s’ academic and recreational lives.

Reduced engagement between parents and children adversely affects academic and non-academic development

As children grow older, however, their dependence on their parents for academic and non-academic support steadily decreases. If we look at parental involvement merely as ensuring attendance and completion of homework or preparation for exams, then yes, that dependence should subside over time. But in reality, parental involvement transcends these implicit and traditional norms of parental responsibility.

Studies have shown that talking with adolescents about political or social issues has shown to have a positive impact on children’s learning.

While older children may not need their parents’ assistance with simpler tasks, they begin to need more nuanced support from their parents elsewhere. Studies have shown that talking with adolescents about political or social issues has shown to have a positive impact on children’s learning. Similarly, students who discuss books, films, and television programs with their parents also show better reading performance.[4]

The steady decrease in parent participation can be attributed to several factors.[5]

1. Parents think their children desire less of their involvement as they grow older.
2. Parents who had negative experiences when they were in school may feel alienated by the school system.
3. Parents feeling ill-equipped to help their child with schoolwork as the curriculum becomes more complex.
4. Most parents have work commitments that allow them very little time to do much else.
5. In rarer cases, some parents also believe that only the school is responsible for educating their children.

If these barriers to sustained parental involvement were addressed with sophisticated interventions, it would become easier to ensure parents remain an integral part of their children’s education throughout their academic lives.

The Indian Context

The Government of India has focussed on the universalization of education at the elementary and secondary level in the recent past. At the tertiary level, the Government has encouraged foreign universities to establish branches in India thereby boosting global standards of education.

This aspiration isn’t limited to the Government. Parents across different socioeconomic strata view quality education as a means to a better life. Parents’ expectation of quality education for their children in schools and colleges heightens with increasing affordability. This also indicates the increasing willingness of parents across the board to volunteer more time and energy to their children’s education.

In the year 2020 alone, the Pandemic put the Indian education system through the wringer with schools having to invent a “learn-from-home” model using technologies like Zoom and Google Meet. However, access to a laptop or smartphone with good Internet connectivity was only half the battle. The second half was getting students to pay attention in classes where their classmates and teachers weren’t present physically.

Parents were compelled to be more involved in their children’s day-to-day learning activities; no more were parental responsibilities relegated to after-school hours. Active parental involvement during school hours was no more a choice but a necessity, especially for toddlers. While this put a lot of stress on working parents, especially mothers, it did encourage educators, parents, as well as employers to reexamine how they supported parental involvement and participation in the children’s education.

In the pandemic, active parental involvement during school hours was no more a choice but a necessity, especially for toddlers.

As schoolchildren in India continue to learn from home, schools have begun exploring new methods of keeping parents perpetually updated on the class schedule, homework, test dates, scores, and other activities. Class teachers are finding it easier to manage students and deliver strong learning outcomes by communicating with parents regularly. School management is looking to recruit new batches of students through predominantly online engagements, with virtual tours, parent interviews, and online fee collection.

Myelin’s Role in Parental Involvement

For a tool like Myelin, which is a one-stop school and learning management system, it is time to rise to the occasion and provide a cohesive solution.

Myelin is already equipped to not only handle administrative and learning management systems, but also to create long-term behavioral change by promoting parental involvement.

1. With Myelin’s social chat features, parents and teachers regularly have contextual conversations about the students thereby building and maintaining trust between the two.
2. Notices from the school’s authorities, educators, and trainers are directly sent to the parents along with tracking systems to ensure the notices are read and responded to.
3. Parents can stay up-to-date on the academic and non-academic progress of their child through Myelin’s intelligent reports.
4. Myelin’s nudges encourage reticent parents to be more involved by suggesting topics that the parent should discuss with the teacher. These suggestions are a manifestation of Myelin’s AI-driven reporting systems which collect and analyze data across a wide gamut of child development indicators such as student performance, interest, inherent talents, and sociability.
5. Myelin also analyses and scores parental involvement which allows teachers to check for low involvement and take corrective steps through parent outreach. In fact, Myelin’s parental scores can be a catalyst to encourage parents to involve themselves in the school’s activities by conducting workshops and volunteering their time and resources.
6. To promote community involvement, Myelin suggests extracurricular activities happening in the community that the child is most likely to enjoy based on the child’s interest and abilities profile.
7. As a child grows older, Myelin can suggest constantly evolving at-home activities and engagements to parents to stay involved in their children’s lives.

Myelin is a tool that unites all the stakeholders of a child’s educational journey. The role Myelin will play to bring about equal participation of parents and educators in the success of a child will be pivotal.

[1]Zill & Nord, 1994; Epstein, 1990

[2]Cole, Meghan, “The importance of parental involvement in language acquisition and activities and techniques to enhance the homeschool connection” (2008). Independent Studies and Capstones. Paper 347. Program in Audiology and Communication Sciences, Washington University School of Medicine. http://digitalcommons.wustl.edu/pacs_capstones/347

[3]Parent Involvement and Children’s Academic and Social Development in Elementary School, Nermeen E. El Nokali, Heather J. Bachman, Elizabeth Votruba-Drzal, Child Dev. 2010 May-Jun; 81(3): 988–1005. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467–8624.2010.01447.x
PMCID: PMC2973328

[4]OECD (2012), Let’s Read Them a Story! The Parent Factor in Education, PISA, OECD Publishing. http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264176232-en

[5]Ten to Teen, Addressing the Decline of Parent Involvement in Middle School, Diana Brannon, https://www.naesp.org/sites/default/files/resources/2/Principal/2007/N-Dp62.pdf