Parents are often reluctant to become involved in their children’s school. Some may feel that teachers will see their activity as “an attack”, others may doubt in their ability to contribute to school life. In parallel, school managements often do not know how to attract parents even where they genuinely desire parental involvement. This project used simple and low-cost techniques to reduce the gap between these two groups and thus effectively improve parental participation in schools.
In the context of the OSI project “Advancing Educational Inclusion and Quality in South East Europe”, proMENTE asked schools in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) to think up creative strategies to mobilize parents. Two schools were selected.
Although taking place over a short time period (Jun-Nov 2009), each school carried out a number of activities as part of the project. The process was extremely participatory with great efforts made by schools to contact parents and ask them for their suggestions regarding activities. A key event proposed by one school was a sports tournaments and barbecue party in which parents, children and teachers took part. The other school took the initiative to organize a field trip with parents and teachers. Such activities helped to secure connections between the groups and build the basis for future healthy working relationships.
More details on this can be accessed here: http://www.promente.org/ESP1a-action-report-e.pdf.
Feedback revealed that those who participated felt that mutual understanding between parents and teachers significantly improved. This model, encouraging self-initiative and informal, multi-activity projects, seems to be effective and could be applied elsewhere. Future work in BiH should build on these positive experiences and aim to improve the networking skills of parent councils and their ability to attract new members.
For more info please contact: proMENTE at info@promente.org
