Lifelong learning through parental involvement

The greater involvement of fathers in their children's upbringing leads to better developmental outcomes for children, Nora Macelli, CEO of the Foundation for Educational Services (FES), said yesterday.

Ms Macelli added that the FES recognised the need to develop effective ways of engaging fathers - three per cent of the parents the foundation worked with - in educational activities so that they became more involved in their children's education.

Ms Macelli was speaking during the first of a two-day conference with the theme "Lifelong Learning through Parental Involvement in Education", held at the Coastline Hotel, Qawra.

The conference marks the completion of the Parent Empowerment for the Family Literacy Project (PEFaL), which was co-funded by the EU Commission through the Grundtvig strand of the Socrates Programme.

The project, Ms Macelli said, has been removing barriers between teachers and parents, the two most critical stakeholders in the children's lifelong journey.

While recognising the "unique snowball effect" that the project had on parents who have realised that they too are learners, she explained that the foundation has reached the stage where it needs to refine its strategies and approaches in a number of key areas.

"We need to intensify our efforts to reach out to families who are missed by schools and educators. We also need to connect with fathers in a meaningful way. The FES has made headway in reaching out to families that rarely, if ever, establish links with their children's school.

"But we still need to develop effective ways of engaging fathers in educational initiatives so that they become involved fathers."

She also highlighted a gap in the lifelong journey of teachers who were bound by law not to work while on parental leave.

"What we are suggesting is that, through a range of casual part-time work opportunities with FES, these teacher-mothers would be able to remain connected with their profession in a meaningful way," she said.

The FES chairman Professor Kenneth Wain explained that over the years during which the FES has been developing parent participation programmes, the foundation's aims have become more and more ambitious.

"Our original objective was primarily to provide mainly for children at risk of school failure, particularly those with serious literacy problems, and to address those problems through the involvement of their parents.

"Therefore, we tended to regard the parents mainly as a means, but we quickly became more ambitious.

"We quickly came to see the parents as ends in themselves; as persons with needs and with a right to education of their own, independently of their role as parents," he said.

The FES's long-term policy, he said, is to turn the parent-teacher-child triangle into a quadrilateral by bringing in the fourth indispensable partner, namely the community.

Professor Wain emphasised the importance of lifelong learning as the only long-term solution for the survival and competitiveness of knowledge-based economies that depend on human resources.

Similarly, Education Minister Louis Galea explained: "Lifelong learning as a concept is high on the international and local agenda. We no longer speak of education ending at the end of compulsory schooling, but the great validity and necessity of a lifelong perspective.

"Lifelong learning, employment and social inclusion are inextricably linked. This is why our country cannot afford to address any of these areas in isolation.

"The integration of education and employment under one ministry needs to be further exploited to advance this perspective."

Speaking about the parent-teacher relationship, Dr Galea pointed out that "parents can, not only help the school to educate their children, but can receive from the school a number of ideas about how to help their children.

"They can become more self assured and acquire a deeper sense of satisfaction with respect to their children's education, ...the parent as teacher becomes the parent as learner. Parent and child alike are students."

He noted that since 2002, the FES has offered its programmes and services to approximately 2,500 students; 1,200 teachers and 2,200 parents and trained 80 volunteers to work in its programmes.