Parents are the first teachers of our lives. Before one steps into the formal education setup of schools, it’s them, our primary caregivers from whom we constantly learn. Being our safe haven, what one learns observing their parents from the nascent stage, stays with life. Similarly, beyond parental protection, another primary source of learning is one’s community – where a person grows, socialises, and identifies with.
Without the relationship between parents and the community, no education can be truly effective. It is important to proactively seek out and consistently reaffirm the collaboration and support of parents and communities. Therefore, sensitising these two important parties results in more community and family participation, improved educational practices, and stronger accountability systems. Effective collaborations between schools and communities are built on providing parents with the tools they need to take care of their children’s education.\
Sensitising parents towards their involvement in education
In Indian culture, parents play a central role in the upbringing of their children, regardless of their socioeconomic status. A child’s ability to openly communicate his emotions and sentiments is frequently hindered by parents who handle their children in an overly authoritarian manner. This can have an impact on the child’s openness to learning and knowledge. Anxiety, fear, and uncertainty cloud the mental state, which reduces enthusiasm and excitement for fully engaging in learning activities at the outset.
Hence, comes the need to help parents remain aware at every stage of their child’s development and sensitise them to understanding the changing cultural needs, evolving technology and their impact on children, using positive and constructive language, developing an inclusive environment at home, be an active, empathetic listener, and staying up to date with school activities.
Numerous studies conducted throughout the years have confirmed the critical impact that parental engagement plays in enhancing children’s educational support. A substantial amount of research (Desforges and Abouchaar, 2003: 4) demonstrates that “at-home good parenting” is a powerful predictor of children’s success, even when other factors that affect accomplishment—such as the efficacy of primary schools—are eliminated.
Ways to sensitise parents
Schools can effectively support sensitising parents, increase engagement, and raise their level of awareness in several ways. These educational institutions must establish open channels of communication to include parents in the decision-making process regarding extracurricular activities, school rules, and curriculum development. Involving parents in decision-making fosters a more inclusive and culturally sensitive educational system in addition to fostering a sense of ownership and shared responsibility.
Sensitisation can be brought in by frequent parent counselling aimed at helping them become sensitive to the possible adverse effect of their behaviour on their children. By helping parents gain a better understanding of themselves and their personalities can harmonise parent-children equations in terms of shared learning.
Further, through parent-teacher workshops, there is a space for mutual learning on educational strategies, child development, and curriculum, along with topics like positive parenting and understanding learning difficulties. Such spaces also open up to a diverse audience of children from different socio-economic backgrounds and development disorders. Parents may contribute to opening up their viewpoints, which in turn affects what they teach their children, by observing all the youngsters interact with one another and following the varied ways of tending to children with special needs.
What is a community and how their participation matters?
In its study on community participation in education, the World Bank explores the literature on the subject and defines a community as a group of people who share a variety of traits, including location, class, race, culture, language, customs and law. Certain communities are homogeneous while others are heterogeneous, and some are united while others are conflictive.
Parents and families cannot be the only group of people for children’s education as long as their children interact with and learn from the world outside their families. Families and parents need help from their communities and society in order to raise, socialise and educate their children. It hasn’t been properly acknowledged that communities themselves have resources to give to education, even if some have historically been involved in their children’s education. Communities may be resources by imparting local knowledge to their children.
How can communities be sensitised?
Communities need to be sensitised in their involvement in their children’s education as it contributes to the creation of curriculums and educational resources that accurately depict children’s daily experiences in society. Children find it easy to make connections between what they are learning and what they already know when they read textbooks and other resources that depict their own experiences in their community.
Sensitisation can also result in the identification and treatment of elements like low participation and subpar academic achievement that may fuel educational issues at the local levels.
Further, community participation can contribute to promoting girls’ education. Through regular participation in sensitisation programmes, parents and communities can discover that girls’ education improves many aspects of their lives, including economic productivity, family health and nutrition, reduced fertility rates, and lower child mortality rates, by getting involved in school activities and keeping in regular contact with teachers.
Engaging communities and parents in achieving holistic education
Communities must become more sensitive as they understand that education is the key to progress. All of these programmes—from identifying out-of-school children to providing them with an age-appropriate curriculum through bridge programs that allow them to be admitted into regular schools—as well as providing further support through remedial education to prevent dropout rates—fulfil the objectives of the RTE.
Smile Foundation has a four-pronged strategy that prioritises children, the infrastructure of instructors, and fostering a feeling of community ownership by making children curious learners through experiential learning and community-parent interventions connected to nutrition, health, etc. This enhances teaching-learning in the classroom and takes care of the children’s well-being outside formal education institutions, which encourages regularity of the children.
Smile Foundation sensitising parents and communities
At Smile Foundation, we recognise that the foundation of a child’s education is deeply rooted in the involvement of their parents and the broader community. We understand that for education to be truly effective, it requires a collaborative effort that extends beyond the walls of a classroom. That’s why we focus on sensitising parents and communities, equipping them with the knowledge and tools they need to actively participate in their children’s educational journey.
Parents are a child’s first educators, and their role in shaping attitudes towards learning is indispensable. Smile Foundation’s initiatives aim to sensitising parents by creating a supportive home environment that encourages open communication and active participation in their child’s education. Through our Parenting Workshops and Counseling Sessions, we guide parents on positive parenting techniques, understanding child development, and staying involved in school activities. These efforts help create a nurturing and inclusive environment at home that reinforces the learning happening at school.
Communities play a critical role in reinforcing educational outcomes by providing a supportive backdrop against which children grow and learn. At Smile Foundation, we work closely with community leaders, local stakeholders, and educational institutions to build a collective vision for child education. Through our Community Mobilisation programmes, we raise awareness about the importance of education, especially for girls, and encourage communities to actively participate in school management committees and local education initiatives. This inclusive approach ensures that the community feels a sense of ownership over the educational process, contributing to more sustainable and impactful outcomes.
We invite you to be a part of this journey of good change. Together, we can ensure that education becomes a powerful tool for social change and a pathway to a more equitable and prosperous society.