Parents should have a special room for consultation with teachers in every primary school, and specified hours should be set aside for parent-teacher contact, a new report from the Irish National Teachers' Organisation has urged.
The report, Parental Involvement: Possibilities for Partnership, will be presented to the primary teachers union's education conference in Derry today.
"If schools are to be transformed into welcoming places for parents, and where teachers and parents can meet to discuss children's educational progress in relative privacy and with a degree of comfort, each school must have a parents' room," it says.
It warns that at the moment, "teachers, whose school day is entirely composed of class contact hours, cannot at the same time devote more than a few minutes to a parent who calls to the school. This is often a cause of frustration to both teacher and parent".
The report asks for urgent consideration to be given to the provision of a half day at the start of the school year when the curriculum could be outlined to parents; a day for parent-teacher meetings, free from teaching duties, towards the middle of the first term; and a specified time for feedback to children's end of year reports.
It notes that "while many teachers supported the concept of parental involvement, evidence appears that some teachers feel threatened by such developments".
The report urges a comprehensive programme of in-service education for teachers in this growing area of activity. Stressing the importance of good communication and the formation of parents' associations, it notes that parents are being consulted on "an increasing number of policy issues such as school discipline and codes of behaviour".
It notes the possibility of parents' associations being set up on a statutory basis for the first time. This is due to happen in the Education Bill, to be published before Christmas.
The INTO urges every school to develop a clear policy on homework which could include "the issuing and marking of homework, the variety of forms such homework might take and the expected time to be devoted to homework".
The report lists a number of practical recommendations. These include a grant to each school board of management to enable members to undergo suitable training; an annual grant to be paid to each school to help develop home-school linkages; the extension of the Home-School Community Liaison Scheme to all disadvantaged schools; and the development, through parents' associations, of programmes in child development, parenting skills, nutrition, equality issues, assisting with homework and the development of self-esteem in children.