The influence of parental involvement in learning and teaching in the FET phase in the greater Delareyville

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine the influence and level of parental involvement in the FET phase in Greater Delareyville and to identify the causes of poor parental involvement in learning and teaching. Parents have capabilities and responsibilities of creating vibrant learning areas to promote learners' performance. On the other hand, it is believed that a child, who has not developed any sense of security and competence at home, will fail to explore his/her world and develop a sense of curiosity that is essential for learning and teaching. It is further noted that situational analysis is the best effort to be carried out by parents to ensure that the environment/context in which the children learn is appealing and attractive to fulfil their needs. The problem is while parents should be interested at all costs in the life of their children, watch their moves, guide, advice them regularly, control their work and ensure that they are free to do their work without disturbance, many parents seem not to be interested. This also affects the children and parents of schools in the Greater Delareyville Area. In other instances, teachers blame parents for their lack of interest in their children's education. Data was analysed qualitatively and quantitatively. A computer aided statistical analysis was employed to compute the results of the study. The population for the study was drawn from the secondary schools of the Greater Delareyville APO. Out of the 200 secondary schools in the Greater Delareyville APO. 50 schools were randomly selected for the study. From each of the 50 randomly selected secondary schools in the Greater Delareyville APO: a principal, deputy principal, departmental head and an educator were requested to complete the questionnaire. The sample of (N=200) was composed of a total of (4 ) respondents from each of the 50 randomly selected secondary schools in the Greater Delareyville APO. From the findings of the empirical study and literature review, it is revealed that parental involvement in the teaching and learning should be effective. It is hoped that by implementing various decisions made by the committee developed by schools, parents will be more involved in the teaching and learning of their children as they feel that their decisions are seriously considered. The following key words are important in the study as they sum up the writer's ideas in his work. They are thus briefly explained in terms of how they relate to one another in order to reflect a concrete topic of research. Parental involvement is a broad term that includes several forms of participation in education and with the schools in which parents can support their children's schooling by attending school functions and responding to school obligations such as parents- teacher conferences. The primary aim of this involvement is to improve their children's schoolwork, providing encouragement, arranging for appropriate study time and space, modelling desired behaviour, monitoring home-works and actively tutoring their children at home. ( Cotton & Wikeland, 2009; 235) Learning is an activity in which the person being taught actively wishes to benefit from the teaching and absorbs particular learning content or by constructing meaningful and structured information in his or her own mind. As acts of teaching and learning are thus polymorphous, indicating that they take many forms ( Van Heerden , Van der Merwe, Grobler and Loggerennberg; 2004: 61) Teaching is an act of appropriately displaying some subject matter with the intent that someone learns it. FET phase refers to Further Education and Training made of various providers such as senior secondary school, technical colleges, National Government Organisations, private training centres, private companies, industry training centres and community colleges, (Policy Document, 1997: 9). However, this study focuses on parental involvement in high schools.