Parental involvement in a primary Church school : a case study

Abstract

This dissertation presents a case-study account of the collection and analysis of good practice in parental involvement, particularly on initiatives taken by the school council in a Maltese private church school. It is based on semi-structured interviews and observation data and document analysis. The rationale supporting this research is that insights of good practice will help school partners identify new goals as well as new strategies to implement such goals. School council meetings have been attended and the school visited regularly for two years to investigate and analyse when, and in what activities, parental involvement took place during different scholastic years from 1997 to 1999. This dissertation also includes the parents' views on their child's progress and explains parents' and student's opinion on what must be done in the future for the school to better itself. Throughout this study it was evident that schools are aware of the importance of parental involvement and with time, improvements were carried out with co-operation and joint effort of teachers and parents.