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For Parents For Schools

Does Home-School Partnership Work?

Isabella Wong

We’ve explored what a home-school partnership is and gotten an idea of why it is important. However, is it truly effective? 

Some research has shown that parental involvement is more impactful than socioeconomic background, ethnicity or family construct on student overall outcomes and achievement. Such success is also typically confined to singular subject areas – i.e. parent-school partnership in math would lead to improved results in math but not an unrelated subject such as language. 

While a correlation between parental involvement and improved student outcomes has been seen, we cannot establish a clear causal relationship. Most research so far has discussed parental involvement and not necessarily home-school partnerships. 

There has nonetheless been positive correlation between parental involvement in school with the following areas: 

  • More attentiveness to homework and learning through homework
  • Social-emotional learning – self-regulation and social skills
  • Improved relationships with classmates and adults, resulting in overall-better relationships across school, parents and students
  • Greater motivation to learn, increased confidence in school and higher aspirations 
  • Parents’ greater interest in their own education
  • Teachers feel more supported, appreciated and in turn have higher morale at work

Parental involvement does not equate to a partnership with schools. And how do we quantify the quality of relationships between parents and teachers? For example, while parents may be involved in their children’s homework, this could mean anything from instructing, guiding, praising or problem-solving. Also, the school may not actually know the full extent of parental involvement as this information is self-evaluated and provided only by parents. 

Ultimately, a home-school partnership is not one that happens overnight. It involves a commitment from parents and school. To smoothen this process, aids like an effective school management system could make relationship building easier. For example, LittleLives not only helps schools monitor and analyze data related to students, staff, parents and daily administration, but also offers an intuitive school communication platform for teachers and parents to keep one another updated. 

If you would like to find out more, talk to LittleLives at sales@littlelives.com!