Teachers have welcomed a new campaign by the Department of Education to increase parental involvement in children’s learning with a view to maximising their ultimate career potential.
Education Minister John O’Dowd launched the new campaign during a visit to St Therese Nursery School in Poleglass when he highlighted the positive contribution parents can make to their child’s future when they get involved with their learning.
Avril Hall Callaghan General Secretary of the Ulster Teachers’ Union: “Over the last decade schools and teachers have been asked to shoulder a growing responsibility for youth culture with suggestions that many of its problems could be resolved within schools.
“However, as the saying goes, it takes a village to raise a child. In other words, neither parents nor schools alone should be shouldered with that responsibility. Everyone throughout the community has a role to play.
“Research shows the numerous benefits from well-implemented school and community partnership programmes. They include increased student attendance, higher achievement, a sense of greater security, fewer behavioural
problems, and an increase in positive attitudes about school and homework.
“Adult and community participation validates the necessity of school for children and encourages them to study harder.
“Research has also demonstrated an important role for fathers in helping increase student achievement. Children whose fathers are involved with schools have a higher likelihood of getting better grades than those whose mothers alone are involved.
“There are also benefits to community business involvement in schools. Businesses can benefit students by providing mentoring, shadowing and internship opportunities for students to develop new skills. This brings positive attention to the company from parents in the same community.”
Education Minister John O’Dowd launched the new campaign during a visit to St Therese Nursery School in Poleglass when he highlighted the positive contribution parents can make to their child’s future when they get involved with their learning.
Minister John O’Dowd said of the new programme: “Not everyone realises how important parents and family members are as the first people their child learns from.
“This involvement from early in a child’s life can have benefits much later on. A recent study of 15-year-olds, for example, showed that those whose parents had read to them often in P1 did much better at school than those whose parents did not.”