The Effects of Parental Involvement on a School's Efficiency to Function

Shaiffadzillah OmaraliThe Effects of Parental Involvement on a School’s Efficiency to Function

INTRODUCTION

The topic for the research study is Parental Involvement in School and

the school being put under scrutiny is one of the few international schools

established in Brunei Darussalam. It is located within the Jerudong area and is

conveniently closest to the University of Brunei Darussalam. The school first

opened in January 1997 and established in July of the same year with 64

acres of space to accommodate teachers and students from the primary

levels to the pre-university levels (Sixth Form). As of 2004, there are about 80

secondary teachers and around 700 secondary students. Approximately 30%

of the students are locals while 70% are foreigners. The teachers are mostly

expatriates from England, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, with a few

originating from unspecified countries.

With regards to the secondary school department, the highest ranking

staff is the Director of Secondary School Mr.Ferres. Under him are able

teachers posted with specified roles such as the Assistant Principal, the

Deputy Directors, the Heads of Departments and the Heads of Years (a full

staff organization tree is included as Appendix A). The Director was

interviewed while the remaining secondary school staff was given

questionnaires to be completed. The methods will be explained under

Methodology while the results will be elaborated under Data Analysis.

LITERATURE REVIEW

1


Parents are the first teachers to their children from the moment of

conception to the time when these children leave the shelter of their parents.

Even though most parents cannot provide the many knowledge of the world,

they are an essential factor to the healthy development of schooling children.

DATA ANALYSIS

The charts and graphs are data simplified into percentages and

rankings. The full and original forms of the questions are provided in the

appendix. Each question was analysed according to its rationale towards the

agenda, the results, the assumptions that can be made from the results and

if applicable the limitations of the questions.

2


The question was to find out if the school actually has any parent-

involved activities and whether the activities are sufficient enough to base

the research topic with. The data from this question helps build foundations

for other important questions. From the frequency data, information can be

gathered such as how often parents get involved in activities, how much does

the school encourage parental involvement and so forth.

There is an uneven spread of answers but the values are close

together. This spread shows how much the teachers are unaware of how

many activities that involve parents. In other words, they lose count on how

many because most are not the coordinators for such activities. It can be

argued that the question is somewhat flawed because of the word ‘term’.

3


Since JIS offers GCSE, A-Levels and SATs, terms can differ depending on the

exam outlines.

The question was to follow up the previous question. After knowing

how many activities occur per term, it is deemed wise to find out how many

of these activities parents attend. This will determine the relevance of the

school as successful in involving parents.

It can be seen from the chart that parents do attend but not always. To

find out the reasons for parents not attending some activities, a question as

such was posed in question 13. It is easy to assume many reasons to why

only sometimes parents get involved in activities and sometimes not at all.

4


However, to make the study more meaningful, question 13 provides several

options from which the teachers can themselves assume are the reasons for

lack of parental involvement.

This question will ensure that the school being studied indeed

promotes parental involvement. It would be pointless if otherwise.

It is safe to say that the school does promote parental involvement but

with the exception of one Caucasian respondent who believes otherwise.

Only a further study towards this individual can his intentions be explained.

5


In addition, parents whose children attend this school were given a

similar question and they too agree that the school attempts at promoting

parental involvement.

It is rational thinking that a question should be asked about the

purpose and benefit of parental involvement. If parental involvement comes

to nothing, surely teachers would not tire themselves in having P-T meetings

(parent-teachers meeting). From the studies done by scholars (mentioned in

Literature Review), parental involvement helps the progress of their children

at schools. The question is in what areas is parental involvement a helpful

resource. The most focused area would be the children’s academic progress

because this is where the school has its authority. However, schools also

6


regard parents as mediators and facilitators of learning, and to provide moral

support and attention.

The chart shows that all the teachers agree that parental involvement

enhances academic progress. Perhaps from observation and experience,

teachers can compare between students whose parents get involved and

those who do not with respect to their academic grades.

There was a famous quote “All work and no play made Jack a dull boy”.

Therefore, to be a good school, it must not only concern itself with students’

academic progress but also with their social progress. The school apparently

excels in parental involvement in societal events. For example, having car

7


boot sales that involves parents, and establishing an organization called

PTCG that organizes social events such as fundraisers and sports that involve

parents.

Similar to question 4 the answers were positive, that is, no one

answered ‘no’. This spread is maybe because that social progress is not as

observable as academic progress and therefore some teachers were unsure.

Nonetheless, parental involvement seems to enhance both academic and

social progress.

8


It is important for both parties to keep in touch to maintain Parent

Teacher harmony. A good relationship between parents and teachers indicate

that the school is a healthy place to study. Contact methods are needed in

order for the school to be able to invite parents to inform them in advance as

well as in cases of emergency.

Apparently, the school is not lacking in this area. They use every

resource they have to contact parents. By post is the most common method,

while by phone and e-mail come second. This shows that the school is

keeping up with modernization and makes full use of the Internet as well as

mobile phones. Faxing is another means of contacting parents at their

workplace. Since this question provided space for more personal opinions,

9


two respondents wrote ‘interviews’ and ‘students’ diaries’ respectively. Once

in a while the parents are interviewed either by request of the school or

during P-T meetings. A ‘student’s diary’ is also used as a means because the

diary needs to be signed and commented by the parents to acknowledge

their children’s progress or problems.

This question is to make sure that the school has a certain record

where ‘hotlines’ to the parents are listed. So if accidents or problems occur in

the school, the parents of the student involved can be informed within

minutes.

10


The chart shows that the school is confident that they have all the

contact numbers required. These contact numbers are stored in organized

filing cabinets and the computer administration records. Moreover, the

previous question (question 06) also implies that the school is prepared with

many means of contacting the parents.

The flaw to this question is that it is a literal question where the answer

is obvious even without questioning since any school must have at least

some form of contact number. The flaw was overlooked but the data still

remains useful as an assurance.

It is useless if all the methods are available yet the parents are

unreachable.

11


However, from this data, it is obvious that parents can be contacted with

ease. Of course, the persistence of the school to having the parents

contacted by phone, email, letters, and fax at once would ensure the parents’

attention.

Nonetheless, the fact that parents can easily be contacted does not

imply that they will be involved in school activities. The school’s effort to

invite parents may be persistent but parents may have reasons to not attend

school activities. These reasons will be highlighted in question 13.

This is the one and only open question in the questionnaire. Since a

questionnaire is meant to be completed in quick time, only a few (7

respondents) filled in and gave their opinions.

12


However, we obtained interesting data on what other factors would

affect communication between teachers and parents. ‘Problems in the family’

and ‘profession’ are two huge factors. A family problem such as parent-child

conflicts may indicate parents’ reluctance in being involved and hence

affecting academic and social progress. ‘Profession’ is most important

because a parent who works late hours or are constantly abroad such as a

‘National Geographic staff’ do not have time to be involved.

Residence status may show how long will the parents be in Brunei.

Nationality may indicate how fluent is the parent in English and what their

cultures the teacher needs to respect are. Marital status is also an important

factor because a divorce might explain problems that the student may have

and the lack of involvement from the parent s part.

13


Although it has been explained in literature that parents should be

involved but the decision lies with the school. Hence, do the teachers in this

school believe parents should be involved or are there any parent-teacher

conflicts?

As can be seen from the chart, the majority believes that parents

should. This supports the notion that teachers have (in question 04 and 05)

that parental involvement is beneficial to their children’s progress.

14


This question is the first of the three ranking questions where

respondents are demanded to rank the listed options from the most

important to the least important. The ranking system was that (1) is the most

important and (5) is the least important. The feedback from each respondent

was expected to be sets of various combinations. Perhaps one respondent

may grade all the options as 1 while another may grade all as 5. A complex

table was formed where all the data were included and to simplify, the

multiple graph above was produced. By looking at which line is the highest on

which ranking, it is easy to see which is the most important and which is the

least. The orange line above being highest on level 1 indicates that it is the

most important while the yellow line being highest on level 5 indicates that it

15


is the least important. From the most important, the sequence is academic,

social, discipline, financial and administrative respectively.

Academic comes first because this is the considered the most

important by teachers and perceive them as parents’ highest priority. Social

is considered and indication that the students’ have healthy relations with

their surroundings. Discipline is also an agreed priority to teachers and

parents. All three are areas where teachers consider parents as able to make

impressions. Financial is not required much from the parents’ part possibly

because the school already realizes parents as fee-paying clients. The school

feels reluctant for parents to be involved in administrative work because

most parents are not well trained to handle such complexities and parents

might muddle with their children’s administrative records.

16


This question demanded teachers to rank the specific areas where

they would like parents to be involved in. The most expected is in the area of

volunteer work where parents can contribute their services especially in one

that they specialize in. For example, recently parents have volunteered in

making dresses and costumes for their children to wear during the school’s

International Day. Helping homework comes second because teachers

believe that parents are the teachers at home when the children face

difficulty and no school teachers are around to attend to Charity is one

activity that often appears in the school’s event schedule. Recently, parents

and teachers joined together (as PTCG) to raise funds for a football club by

organizing min-football matches. Parents are also useful during school trips

where they can help supervise children and also provide refreshments.

17


Coaching in ECA and cleaning campaign are the two most unpopular choices

because coaching needs a good qualification in sports and physiology while a

cleaning campaign is impossible because the school has maintained a

perfectly clean environment.

This ranking question correlates with question 2. Since data shows that

parents are not always involved in school activities, the reasons to why this is

so must be obtained. This question offers teachers with four options and the

most popular, and expected, answer is that parents are too busy with work.

With role redefinition nowadays, it is normal to find both parents working to

stabilize family income. Working hours obviously coincide with school hours

and for activities that are conducted at night are at times where parents are

either recapping their day’s work or resting from work stress. However, some

18


parents do make the effort in attending activities provided that the school

informs beforehand so permission of leave can be obtained. Sometimes the

wrong information can be relayed from the teacher to the children to the

parents. Misunderstandings can also be cause by typo errors or ambiguity of

messages. Teachers do not agree that the parents do not feel welcomed by

the school although some wrote down notes near the question that parents

might be intimidated by the notion of speaking to teachers because they are

not used to it or are not fluent in English. The idea that parents are not

concerned with their children is false as can be seen from this data. Rational

thinking would suggest that all parents are concerned for their children or

else they would not have schooled them.

19


Although some of the suggestions provided have already been carried

out by the school, the main objective of the question was to focus on ways to

improve parental involvement by improving some factors. Two thirds of the

teachers believe that parents should be involved in all school activities and

during these activities the parents should feel welcomed by the school (the

ways of executing this is in question 15). Only 30% believe that there should

be more parent teachers meet. This is due to the fact that there can only be

a few in a year or else it would be a burden and a hassle for parents. One

respondent gave his personal opinion that the school should continue

encouraging teachers’ participation. It is assumed that what the respondent

is implying is that activities should involve both teachers and parents equally.

20


The question provided suggestions on how to improve parents’ comfort

and simultaneously parental involvement. Most teachers agree that parents

should be provided with refreshments, a pleasing environment and proper

facilities. Those that did not contribute to this data noted that they believe

the school has already initiated these suggestions. Three respondents gave

their personal opinions that teachers should indulge in ‘meet and greet’

situations, for example, initiating informal conversation with parents who

might be sitting on a bench while waiting for their children.

Comparisons

A similar questionnaire was conducted to parents whose children study

in this school. Although only a small sample was received, upon comparison

with the data gathered from the teachers, it can be concluded that the

answers acknowledge each other. In other words, the parents have similar

views and thoughts as the teachers.

The data from the questionnaire is then compared with data from the

interview with the Director of Secondary School, Mr. Ferres, and the results

tabulated as below:

How many activities involve parents?

06 – 10 activities A lot. Naming a few : International Day, Fun Day, Walk for Earth Day, Hollywood Quiz night, etc.

How often do parents get

80% sometimes20% always

Not much involvement of parents. More parental

21


involved? involvement in primary than secondary level.

Does the school encourage parental involvement?

95% said yes Yes

Does parental involvement enhance academic progress?

100% said yes 80% scored between A-C in IGCSE while 50% scored between A-B in A-Levels

Does parental involvement enhance social progress?

80% said yes Yes

22