ALL three teachers unions have expressed support for parental involvement in education and for appropriate training to equip parents for this role.
John White, assistant general secretary of the ASTI, says that anything that extends the knowledge parents have of the school system would be strongly supported by the ASTI.
"All of the evidence suggests that the more parents know about education the better for their children. Teachers welcome the involvement of parents. If teachers have the support of knowledgeable parents the job will be made easier and more productive."
He says he can only see problems arising where parents do not recognise that there is a professional domain within which teachers operate.
Rose Malone, education and research officer with the TUI, also supports parental training initiatives but she expresses some disquiet that the money for parental training is coming from the ICDU. It should not really be coming out of the inservice budget, it is not part of a parent's career, she says.
In a recent editorial in an INTO publication, Joe O'Toole, general secretary of the INTO, wrote that the parent is responsible for seeing that the child is educated.
"This must imply that when the parent decides to discharge that responsibility by seeking the assistance of a professional teacher there must be a sense of confidence and reassurance that a correct choice has been made," he wrote.
Teachers must ensure that parents have that trust. When trust is not created, a vacuum of information is created.
"Vacuums are dangerous because it results in parents not knowing or understanding what is going on in the school. .. Logically this leads to the point of recognising that parents have a responsibility to know and teachers have a responsibility to inform. This helps to distinguish the grey area between parenting and teaching. More importantly it underlines the need for a partnership approach where the parents have equal but very different rights and responsibilities," said O'Toole.
