Correlation of Parental Involvement in Their Children Education with Children Achievement and Teacher’s Work Evaluation

Abstract

Parent’s involvement in school’s life has become the objective of many researches for several decades. Unfortunately, there is a big lack of researches in this field in Lithuania. In this article, the results of the analysis of the data base of National Agency of School Evaluation are presented. Data of parent survey were analyzed. The aim of this analysis was to find out how parents’ attitude towards involvement in their children’s school life relates with children (students) academic achievement and teachers work evaluation by parents. The main theoretical assumption of this analysis was that correlation of students achievements can be of dual character: students’ high achievements can be valuated as the illustration of positive influence of parent’s positive attitude towards cooperation with school and involvement into their children school life. From the other point of view, students’ low achievement can become an obstacle in the way of collaboration with school’s staff. In this survey, 29358 parents of 175 schools participated. The survey was organized in years 2010-2011. 7 questions about parent’s attitude towards involvement in school’s life, their children achievement and evaluation of teachers work were selected from the questionnaire. Three types of parents’ attitude towards involvement into life of their children’s school were identified: a) parents with a positive attitude – constantly interested in school’s activities and participate in school’s life, b) neutral (variable) – interested in school’s activities and participate in school’s life only from time to time, c) negative – not interested in school’s activities and do not participate in school’s life.
According to the results of this analysis, several conclusions were formulated: parents’ attitudes towards involvement into their children life correlate with student’s achievements. Parents of students with high achievements more often demonstrate a positive attitude towards involvement into school’s life and more often participate in school’s activities.
Parents with a neutral or negative attitude towards involvement in their children’s life are more often dissatisfied with the school’s performance. They state that their children do not like their school, more often blame schools for their children’s failure, think that teachers are not objective in their assessment of student’s academic performance. This group of parents more often thinks that their children are lacking teacher’s support and that teachers do not respect parent’s opinion. Only for parents with the neutral or negative attitude towards involvement in their children’s school it is characteristic to be less interested to participate in school’s life as their children grow.