Engaging Parents, Youth and Schools in Developing Academic Success

Recently the role of parents in education has changed dramatically and become overwhelmingly complex and confusing in modern, democratic societies (Davies, 1988). But the state has also a stake in children's education - requiring that all pupils attend school, take certain courses and programs, and, in many countries, attain certain prescribed levels of achievement. Parents are no longer willing to stand by and let the school bureaucrats make all the decisions. Parents have become crucial to school reform, as key decision-makers. Parents want their child to succeed. Any kind of involvement in a child's education gives a parent a feeling of great satisfaction and reassures the child that the parents care about his or her education. The paper summarizes the factors associated with the necessity and importance of parent involvement in education which has become a major educational issue since the 1980s; briefly traces the history of parental involvement in education and underlines the key issues of parents' participation in their offspring's education. The paper examines the role and function of parents as consumers and participants, highlights the factors that solve the dilemmas affecting the roles of parents in educational reforms.